Redbox wasn’t the only company to recognize and attack this waste of resources. NetFlix was clearly way ahead of me in recognizing this, founded in 1997.

This makes me think of another market opportunity I’ve seen emerge. Printing services.

Owning a printer is a complete pain in the ass, and – for most people – it’s really not worth it. Inkjet printers break constantly, and their cartridges are expensive, and dry out. Laser printers are generally too expensive. Not to mention printers are ugly and take up lots of space.

So, I gave up on owning a printer years ago. Even running my own business, I don’t do much printing. I’ve managed to get by without a printer most of the time. On occasion, I have to print something.

So, I send my prints to Kinko’s Docstore. I upload the file, pay, then go pick up the prints a few hours later. It’s much cheaper page-per-page than going to the store and printing. The other day I printed a Groupon (an act which should have been unnecessary), and it cost me 24 cents.

24 cents for a human to receive my file, print it out, along with a page with details on the print job, and stuff it into a bag. The human then diverted his attention from other customers in the store to hand me this bag. A day later, another human called me to make sure that the job had been done right.

Needless to say, FedEx (Kinko’s) didn’t make a profit off of my print job. But, I’m sure such ridiculously trivial jobs are probably more commonplace than they used to be.

I would guess more people are forgoing having home printers. They so rarely need them. More people, now jobless, are starting their own businesses. Their limited capital and time isn’t wisely spent in buying and maintaining a printer.

So, why is there no printing “vending machine.” I send my simple print job to a remote vending machine in my neighborhood (maybe at my local grocery store). It prints it, sends me an email or SMS, and I go pick it up as I run errands. A camera inside could keep records of the printouts to settle disputes over print jobs gone wrong.

It’s printer ownership as a service. The Redbox. The ZipCar. Of printing.

But, there’s assumptions. As digital media downloads will probably kill Redbox, would an eventual elimination of paper kill this machine and business? Do you have a printer? How often do you print? Would you use this?

Redbox photo from saaby

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It’s called Being Yourself for a Living; and while it’s been done before – but reserved to those of massive celebrity and resources – it’s becoming more feasible for more people each and every day. Technology has brought us channels that allow us to express our unique personalities, to share our unique knowledge and experiences, and to explore our curiousities.

You may have just one burning passion. Some may say that BYFL will be easier for you; but not necessarily. In today’s world, boundless curiousity is once again an asset. You’ll have to know a little HTML at the least. The Renaissance Person is back.

It will start with a blurry flurry of snowflakes. “You lack focus.” But eventually those snowflakes stick together. Technology has brought us feedback mechanisms by which to see just which of those snowflakes stick. You now have a snowball, and the ground upon which you stand has been blanketed. Start rolling!

Hi, my name is Kadavy, Inc.. What is your name?

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• Six select members, all of us entrepreneurs in Chicago.
• We read books on our own – based on the challenges we each face as business owners. Sometimes they are from the Personal MBA list, sometimes not.
• We meet for brunch one Saturday a month at a swanky place in The Loop, and invite a business leader from a particular field of expertise to join us each time and talk about their experiences.
• We keep each other updated on what we’re reading, and how it’s helping us with our businesses.

Sorry to say, but you’re not invited. There’s a ton of people we wish we could include in the group – but won’t. Here’s why we’re keeping the group small:

• Having a safe place to share confidential information about our businesses enhances the learning experience. This is really a big one.
• The waitstaff already hates us for putting down 6 credit cards at each brunch. Six is enough.
• In today’s world of bloated invite lists, “maybe” RSVP’s, and no-shows, it’s nice to know who is going to be there each time. We have stronger relationships within the group this way.

That said, I encourage you to start your own DIY MBA group, and I’ll do whatever I can to help you if you do. If you do, we would be very interested to hear how you run your group. Further down the road we can share resources and ideas, and maybe even find a way to join forces.

Some books/resources I/we have found useful:

• Harvard Business Essentials books. Right now I’m reading Finance For Managers
• The Ten-Day MBA
• Business Models Made Easy. What does that phrase that gets thrown around The Valley so much really mean?
• Harvard Business Review. Way more substance than those mags that are more fashion than they are business.
• John Bain & Company Interview Preparation. “Crack the Case” quizzes that show you how a top consulting firm thinks.
• SCORE Free Small Business Counselors in your area.

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So, give it a shot! Buy me a tea (NOW!) and see the rest of the puppy.

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Puppy photo by Ryan Halvorsen

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Thanks so much to all who chimed in on the creativity convertition! When I decided to solicit these ideas, I really wasn’t sure if I should expect to hear much of anything outside of my general understanding of creativity, but I really found some useful tips out of it all. Here are the 10 tips (in no significant order) that were 1) my favorite tips, in combination with 2) submitted by someone who invited – or at least attempted to invite, other people to participate.

Vote (NOW!) for your favorite tip by leaving a comment with the number of the entry that is your favorite, to determine who wins a copy of The Guerilla Art Kit. I’ll close voting at midnight PST Tuesday, February 11th.

Finalists

1. jelling recommends a set of playing cards by Brian Eno that give random suggestions, such as “honor the hidden intention of your error.”
2. Mary suggests assembling a “committee of whimsical people” to drink beer and brainstorm at a particular Tuscon, Arizona bar – and trying not to barf.
3. Adelle recommends Fuel Your Creativity, a blog soley created to provide inspiration.
4. sj suggests that you read magazines from industries NOT related to your own to get ideas from a different perspective.
5. Roger (who submitted via e-mail) has written a great blog post telling you to embrace failure: “errors serve a useful purpose: they tell us when to change direction.”
6. Stephen Davis suggests a blog post by Seth Godin, about how the market conditions of a recession can fuel creativity.
7. Gordon says that something as simple as some household chores can keep him thinking creatively.
8. Ryan suggest, amongst other things, that when listening to music “listen to whole albums, don’t use random,” presumably to keep yourself in one particular frame of mind.
9. Mark discovered in his improv class don’t try to be original.
10. Patty finds that by helping others, she gains a new perspective.

I’d like to add that 1) it was exceptionally difficult to narrow this down to the maximum of 10 that I promised, and 2) there are a couple of slightly late entries in this list that were so strong I decided to include them.

Remember, Vote (NOW!) for your favorite tip by leaving a comment with the number of the entry that is your favorite. Also, please feel free to continue the conversation about creativity, on the original post.

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image via wolfpix

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UPDATE The finalists have been chosen! Thanks to everyone who participated. Vote (NOW!), but please feel free to continue the conversation in the comments below.

How do you keep yourself thinking creatively? Maybe you just go for a walk, you do some yoga. Maybe you spar at your local boxing gym, or fire a gun at a firing range. Maybe it’s a website full of inspiration that you visit, or a simple blog post somewhere that gives you inspiration. The best answer to this question will win a copy of The Guerilla Art Kit, by Keri Smith – which will teach you to start an artistic revolution through your creativity. Whatever it is, be creative – and share it with us. Here’s how the convertition* works:

1. Submit your ways of being creative: do this by @ replying kadavy on Twitter, or simply leave a comment here. Also, if someone told you about this convertition, be sure to mention them, for Karma’s sake (they get clout in the convertition for telling you about it). Your creativity tip can be something you try yourself, or a website, article, book, or blog post that keeps you creative. Need some ideas? Check out my blog post, Eight Life Hacks for Creative Thinking. There may be ways that you stay creative that you hadn’t realized. (This blog post, by the way, is ineligible for submission. Sorry, I only wish.)
   • Not required, but encouraged: include “#cr8” in your tweets so everyone can follow along.
2. Be one of the finalists: Out of all of the submissions, I’ll pick no more than ten finalists. My admittedly unscientific criteria will be the following:
   • Originality of idea: while it may really keep you creative, simply saying “painting” is not likely to land you there – unless your presentation is really interesting (see next).
   • Presentation of the idea: Simple tweets and links to blog posts certainly stand a chance, but why not make a quick video of your creativity inspiring activity of choice – or some other format. The only requirement is that it can be shared on the web for all to see. Your presentation should arouse curiousity, entertain, or simply better explain how said activity keeps you thinking creatively.
   • How many people you get to participate in this convertition: As mentioned above, be sure to share who it is that told you about this convertition (and remind your friends to say you sent them). Remember socializing is a good way to keep yourself thinking creatively.
3. Get voted for: After I pick the finalists, and present them in a new blog post, I’ll ask all of you to vote – via comments – for which tip you like the best. It’s tempting to tell all of your friends to vote – and as such, this is totally permissible and encouraged.

So, how do you stay creative? Blog it, tweet it, whatever – take two minutes to share it with us, and you can win this excellent book. The deadline for submission is Midnight PST, Tuesday, February 3rd. Has passed.

Here’s a video version of the call-for-entries you might enjoy, too:

About the book (via Princeton Architectural Press):

We are living in a golden age of self-expression. The explosion of user-created content on blogs and social networking sites moved Time magazine to name “You” their 2006 person of the year. But while we may be spending a lot more time in virtual worlds, we have not lost the urge to make our physical world more meaningful. By leaving art and ideas in public places, you can affect someone’s day—change their mood or their mind—and maybe even change the world in the process! more >>

*convertition: sort of a competition, but more of a conversation: convertition.

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Image via alicepopkorn

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It used to be, design work was presented in person. A pitch would be made in a board room, explaining the process behind a design, and it would be unveiled before the client. Nowadays, more and more design work is presented remotely, which is great for your flexible schedule, but takes all of the theater out of “selling” your work. E-mail isn’t very professional, PowerPoint and PDFs present version-control issues, and conference calls made over WebEx aren’t asynchronous for the hectic schedules of yourself and your clients. You just need a simple way to present work to your clients, on nice, professional-looking, clickable, web pages. That’s why we built 4sli.de.

4sli.de makes presenting a design to your client so simple, you might say it was stupid. You get 4slides: a title slide; an overview slide and an approach slide (each with three bullet points); and a fourth slide that presents your image. Some talented and dedicated Rails developers and I built this over a weekend, and we want you to check it out – and tell us what we can do to make it better.

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I have a habit of teaching myself things. Yes, I did get a Bachelor’s in Graphic Design, but that didn’t teach me how to use the software, program for the web, and many other things that I know how to do today. If it taught me anything, it taught me how to think, and gave me an opportunity to learn how to think for myself. I even supplemented my education by locking myself in my apartment for the final semester of my education, and checking out every typography book I could find. I learned through that experience that a good portion of the faculty at my University didn’t know a fraction of what they claimed to about the subject. I wouldn’t trade the experience of organized higher education, but it’s not one that I’m eager to repeat.

So why don’t I go to business school? 1) I feel like the teacher-to-student format of most schools is outdated. And I’m not alone on this. 2) I don’t see much value in titles, or words that summarize the complexity of an individual’s experiences in an easily-digestible format (i.e. “I went to Harvard Business School”) 3) I don’t want to pay the actual dollar costs, and opportunity costs, just to be able to say those words (not that I believe I could get into HBS). Going to business school just isn’t my style.

I could just read a bunch of books. Josh Kaufman had put together a nice list of 77 books you can read to get a “Personal MBA.” It’s a nice list. But simply reading all of those books isn’t quite right because 1) It would take me ages to motivate myself through all of it 2) I would be learning in a vacuum, no insight from other minds, and 3) I would miss out on the most valuable aspect of getting an MBA – the people whom you meet.

So what am I to do? I want to get a group of people together to read the books on this list (and/or some that aren’t on this list), and 1) motivate each other to actually read the books 2) discuss the books, so that we aren’t learning in a vacuum, and 3) teach each other through sharing our related experiences in our actual business lives.

I’d probably organize it through Meetup or a Ning page. If there’s enough people, there could be different “tracks,” like the “Design & Production” track – smaller groups of people who read a specific set of books together. The individuals in the groups could present and summarize the books to one another, or present to groups who are in other tracks.

Actual business students and professionals in related fields could come to speak, or participate in discussions. Events and “meetups” would take place in Chicago, but there could be discussion and interaction on the web, as well.

This can be whatever the founding members make it to be, but ultimately, it should be a nimble, efficient, and scalable peer-learning experience. Are you in? Do you have ideas or thoughts? Comment now! And pass this on to others whom this may interest. Wherever they may be.

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Lately I’ve been fascinated by cognizance. With the increased freedom of what we have to do with our time and money these days – so much of what we do with those things is limited by our cognizance of them. We don’t become cognizant of something until our surroundings and experiences that envelop us introduce it to us. What we are cognizant of drastically dictates what we do day-to-day.

Until I was introduced to edamame years ago, I wouldn’t have sought it, because I wasn’t cognizant of it.

Until I moved to San Francisco, ended up working with a bunch of hippies, got a complementary massage, and subsequently learned about essential oils, I never would have known the joys of owning a French Lavender plant. I wasn’t cognizant of that option in life.

Until I got the opportunity to live in Silicon Valley, I wasn’t cognizant about corporate structures, option packages, venture funding, entrepreneurship in general. The critical mass in my environment just wasn’t there to release the entrepreneur in me. I was surrounded by a cloud of interest in job security, buying houses, raising families.

Lack of cognizance can poison our social fabric

The inner-city child may never consider technology as a way to make a living because his surroundings – the people around him, the businesses in his community – may never make him cognizant of it. He’s surrounded by a cloud of crime, poverty, violence.

I wish I was cognizant of something better to do.

The kid brought up in a homogenous suburb may get caught in a cycle of loneliness, lack of authentic stimuli, expression of the self – unless something makes him cognizant of a lifestyle that may better suit him.

Make it a point in your life to have cognizance-building experiences. Travel. Live in different cities. Drive through a part of town you haven’t before. Eat a food item from the ethnic section of your Safeway without knowing what the heck it is. Plug a random keyword into Flickr and browse around.

Uht oh, another food analogy

I am so fucking sick of eating the same salad...

Imagine the only salad you had your whole life was just iceberg lettuce, a couple of slices of onion, and a slice of tomato and ranch dressing. Then one day a friend makes an amazing salad for you. It has six different kinds of greens, walnuts, craisins, balsamic vinagrette. WOW! Now this is a salad!

But you go home, and you can’t make that salad. You don’t even know what the ingredients in it were. You had never even seen walnuts, craisins, etc.. What are you to do? Well, at least you’re cognizant that a better salad exists.

Go spend alot of time in the supermarket (well, a healthy one, anyway). Spend the night if you have to. Grab everything you can find, and make lots and lots of salads, until you finally figure out that perfect salad.

You’ve gained cognizance. You know what you want in your salad, and you know where to get it. If you had to sit at home, drive to the supermarket, try to make a salad, realize you don’t like the ingredients, drive back, repeat, repeat, repeat, until you finally made a decent salad, you…hell, you wouldn’t bother. You have to go live in the supermarket first. You have to bring every food item imaginable into your sphere of awareness to know what you want on your salad. Then, if you want, you can move out of the supermarket. Make a list, and drive back there once in awhile to get the things you need to make your perfect salad.

What the hell are you talking about David Kadavy!? Get it, silly? The salad is your life. The ingredients are your experiences. And living in the supermarket was a cognizance building experience.

So build your own cognizance, and if you see someone who might benefit from some, save them a trip to the supermarket and share with them something that makes your life great.

Salad by Laurel Fan. Swing kid by plasticrevolver. Bug by Mike McCaffrey.

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