Adam Schultz

If this is gods plan, there is nothing we can do about it.

If we can do something about it, we must.

Tough part is when, how, to what extent and at what cost.

Thoughts.

So after being invited by a couple of different people to the beta for Gooruze and then not joining, I finally caved last night and logged about 2 hours on the site.

The tech is solid, nothing too spectacular but good. It’s a scalable social media app that focuses on incentivising participation with an action based scoring system.

With about 3 total hours logged, I’m already #20! (Gooruze member standings)

Now as a social media marketer I have seen all of this before in a number of different verticals and I know that the most important aspects of a community are 3 fold.

In order to ensure success you need:

People with a shared passion (interest isn’t enough)
A clear UI
Participation Incentives

But what’s different about Gooruze that has me acting like Tyrone Biggums.

They are focused on MY passion. On-Line Marketing.
They targeted the right people in the industry to be a part of the founding community members to seed the site before even the beta launch.

That being said, I’m hooked.

I can’t not track my site wide ranking as I ask, comment, and write the time away. Now that I am up to # 20 though, who knows how long I will be able to keep it up as more and more brilliant online marketers join this new platform.

I am already talking to the founders about licensing options of this app for a couple of my clients who have a need for mobilizing a passion centric online community. I will keep you posted on some of the details as things move forward.

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Ignore please - boldadam.gooruze.com

A few weeks back I complained about not having anything to stand for or a movement to really get behind and make my own. I have plenty of ideas and many opportunities that would most likely lead somewhere if I only just committed to something.

Well talk is cheap, time is money and I don’t feel like wasting talk or time anymore.

I have narrowed it down to 2 finalists.

I have 2 core concepts that have been dancing in my head for way to long and I am prepared to move forward on either of them. GiveAndGo.org and LocalCasters.com.

These are 2 completely different ideas with the core linking concept that they are social media projects which require a large community of participants where all are compensated for their involvement in one way ore another.

GiveAndGo.org

The GiveAndGo.org concept was born of perspiration and inspiration. Keith Cassell of Cassell Design (I sublease space in his office in Durham) was telling me about a web page he has setup to track the progress of an incremental cross country bike ride he was doing to raise $ for a good cause. At the end of it all, he had traversed the equivalent of a cross country trip without ever leaving Durham and the surrounding areas. He also managed to raise a nice stack of cash for a good cause.

It got me thinking, we could absolutely create a system to allow people to raise $ for charities through goal based physical action. If I wanted to get sponsors to give me $1 for every game of ultimate Frisbee I played over the net year to raise $ for Urban Ministries of Durham. I would be able to set it all up at GiveAndGo.org.

We would handle all the cash and would create a system that would help them track progress, raise awareness, find sponsors and whatever else we can do help them in their journey. Keith and I talked more over the following 6 months and we already have a preliminary business plan in place. Now we need to polish the idea and get our proposal into circulation for investment.

LocalCasters.com:

If you couldn’t guess by the URL, would be a local media outlet for Indie producers who want to cover the happenings of their favorite haunts. We would allow them to upload video, pics, text from their cell phones in order to have the most timely content available on local happenings. Yahoo and CNN are already doing things on a national level to this effect but I have yet to see a craigslist for local, user generated, journalistic media. Revenue would come from 2 sources and would be shared with the producers based on % of overall page views of their content and our total revenues for a given time period. There are other details of this project that are already worked which will remain under wraps for now.

I figure we will need to launch in one market and partner with local media outlets for phase 1 in order to prove the concept before moving the top us metro markets. (and then the ENTIRE WORLD, muahaha, muahahahahah, muaahahahahahahaahaah… sorry.)

What I need to get started on these concepts:
A business plan writer
A lead developer

What I will need in 4 months:
Angel funding (or charity sponsorship for GiveAndGo.org)
A business developer
A site editor

What I have to offer:
A Winning concept, guidance, leadership, and, of course, the almighty equity.

This post started as my third comment in a string on a post over at MarketingHipster.com sparked by news that fans pulled all kinds of stunts including sending 45000 pounds of peanuts to CBS offices to bring a TV show back on the air.

Cord was pissed that people would raise that much ruckus and mobilize so well for a friggin TV show rather than putting that time and money into something more meaningful. He was totally on point.

I was commenting my outrage there for a while but my latest comment was to big for that little comment window.

Where is the political action campaign where we send 45000 pounds of cow shit to the white house to give back some of the BS he has given us over the past 7 years? I don’t think Move-On.org would ever send out a bulletin asking users to do that.

(Actually, that’s not a bad idea. Anyone want in?)

As marketers, we need to find a way to rally people around something that both reactivates this nerve that has gone numb and their need to pay attention to online entertainment.

Here are my first 4 Ideas
Find a way to create an online reality TV show that follows an activist group trying to raise awareness and make change in the country on issues ranging from homelessness to ousting Bush.
Try to get one of us (net brights) to run for political office where the entire campaign and then the whole time in office is transparently published and openly discussed on a day to day basis allowing the community to see and interact with the day to day political challenges.
Create an online network where all we do is create shows and interactive environs supporting this kind of programing utilizing net distribution like Joost, YouTube, Democracy instead of traditional broadcast.
Mobilize a community that will somehow deliver cow manure as close to the White House as they can safely get without getting arrested or thrown into Git-mo for a chemical attack on Our Nations Capital. “We are just fertilizing the lawn man, where is the law against that.”

(I am sure that idea 4 will get me on some no fly lists or at least a secret service entry in my log files)

Now what?

If anyone wants to help me with some of these ideas, I would love to put together a little squad under the Bold Actions banner to see what we can accomplish. Let me know if you are interested.

Be sure to comment your ideas, what do you think we can do to make a difference?

How can we stand up and fight for something meaningful.

UPDATE - 06-12-07 - After further consideration on idea 4 and a log file entry form the US Postal Service, sending fertilizer in the us mail might actually be illegal. So instead, I’m thinking little plastic poo. We could attach little messages to it. We might even be able to get a novelties company to donate the poo to our cause.

As an online marketing consultant, I get to help a lot of different people do some pretty amazing things.

These are all entrepreneurs with great vision who bring real value to their respective marketplaces in one way or another. This is mainly because if they didn’t have that, I wouldn’t work with them.

That being said, I have this creeping, slowly filling my consciousness, kind of urge to hyper focus on one thing and become IT. Find that one thing and make it mine. Put all my eggs into that basket, become the go to expert in the space and create a brand by the people for the people in that space.

Ideally, it would accomplish 3 major goals.

1. Make the world a better place to live for my children (only have one so far).
2. Be socially and environmentally supportive.
3. Make me enough money that I can step out, keep my bills paid and devote the rest of my time supporting or creating non-profit organizations to do additional good in the world.

The Plan is this.

1. Find the market or product that I want to “become”.
2. Create a new company or buy a company presently in the space.
3. Market the hell out of it and stick to my core principles.

I know it sounds hokey, I know I’m naive, but so far in life I have been able to accomplish my goals one step at a time once i recognize what it is that i want to achieve.

Here is where i need some help.

I need some people who share this desire and want to be a part of something special.

People who excel in their space but who are ready to attach them selves to something meaningful and personal.

In order to begin this process, I can think of 2 Individuals I would like to bring on board right now.

1. A Business Planing Specialist - This person would be able to help us create plans and practice due diligence on our ideas to help weed out bad opportunities and allow the cream to rise to the top.

2. An Operational Mastermind - I am a good strategist, motivator and sales person. However, I need assistance organizationally to pull off something of this magnitude. I would need a manager to help keep deadlines tight, create and implement support systems and help to keep things scalable as we move forward.

Now this may be one person to do all of this initially or I may need to find a couple of people to pull it off but I do want to find these people and soon. Initially, the engagement would involve at least a weekly commitment and would involve no cash.

Growing up, my older brother used to tell me “You will always miss 100% of the shots you don’t take” (pretty popular motivational phrase). I’m ready to take some shots and I’m looking for some people to join me.

If you are interested, or know of someone who is, drop me a line and let’s talk.

Here is a piece of brain crack that has been bouncing around in my head all week.

Enjoy and don’t forget to share!

I want to find an old, abandoned warehouse in downtown Durham and clear it out. Ideally, we would find a building we could purchase but a flexible landlord could work as well.

I would get a phone line, power and internet up and running and invite any and all Local On-Line Marketing Entrepreneurs to share the space. Eventually, we could get partitions and conference areas.

Rent would be negligible and we would all have people around to bounce ideas off of and problem solve with. Partnerships would ensue on a project basis and people with totally different skill sets could get together as needed. Everyone in the building would be a possible vendor and a possible client.

Eventually, we could share some support services like lawyers and accountants.

If I could learn a little more about how to pull this off or could get a few good leads on abandoned space that would be willing to take a chance on an experimental tenant, I would be willing to follow up on this and try to make it happen.

Ze Frank once said, “When I get an idea, even a bad one, I try to get it out into the world as fast as possible, ’cause I certainly don’t want to be addicted to brain crack.”

I have added a new category to the side bar where I will be smoking my brain crack.

I get a lot of Ideas. No, really, a lot.

I have 30 or 40 little voice memos currently on my Phone that are short ideas that will most likely never be followed up on. These are only in the past 6 months or so.

In most cases, I truly feel that the vast majority of them deserve hashing out and given enough time, could be very successfull. Fortunately or unfortunately, between having a family life and taking care of clients, these ideas take a back seat.

This section of my blog will be dedicated to these Ideas and will be their first journey out of my brain and into the world.

Should one or more of these ideas sound so fantastic to you that you take it and run. I only ask that you somehow include me in the resulting action so that I might get the chance to watch my babies grow up and help shape their future.

Additionally, should you want to invest in seeing one of these concepts through to execution, I would be more than happy to lead the charge.

Update:

Here is another post on the subject via the ADD Executive.

“Give it a ceremonial death — write it down and burn it. enjoy the
fire. know that you’ve “released the energy of the idea back into the
universe.” it didn’t get wasted, it just got converted. “

Thanks Phil.