E-M8 Entrepreneurial Management for Eternal Mission

The other day, at Spreenkler, while waiting for Mayor Tom Barrett to show up, I was talking with the owners of Transfer Pizzeria in their new location Via Downer and we stumbled upon an idea that would do more for revolutionizing business district revitalization in most cities than any government program, and unlike other government programs it would raise money for the government rather than spend it.

The idea is simple, if a commercial building appears to be vacant, anyone can report it by taking a picture and submitting it to the city website. The landlord gets a notice to within 90 days produce proof that the building is occupied or have the building become subject to the blight property tax that triples the rate of the regular real estate taxes.

The net result? Landlord has every incentive to develop, sell or lease out their property rather than sit on it. They cannot any longer sit on their hands waiting for a government grant, or for someone else to develop a nearby property, while their property destroys the value of the neighborhood. They now have an incentive to enter in to short term leases, just so the building is occupied, which encourages startups.

Just think what would happen to the number of new businesses in the city if any empty building could be rented for very close to the cost of utilities.

The interesting part is that the landlords also win. The responsible landlord can now invest in their property with confidence, knowing that their neighbors have to do the same thing. They actually stand to make more money if the citywide business activity expands and occupancy rates are very close to 100%.

The city wins in a couple crucial ways:

1. They get an additional tax stream that can be used for street improvement
2. They eliminate the abandoned buildings and the problems they bring to the neighborhood
3. They foster business activity, especially new business starts
4. They will create a huge incentive to donate empty buildings to non-profits

The best part about this piece of legislation is that it can be a local ordinance and any village or a city can pass it relatively easily. What do we have to lose. Is there at least one place in Wisconsin willing to try it? What are your thoughts?

This Tuesday I was at a presentation “Make the noise go away” that was put on by HNI and was really stumped by a question in the hallway as we were discussing what we just heard. The question had to do with the impact of the first in command being free to do what he is best at in the business that I am currently involved with managing, Bucket Brigade. It was hard to answer because we are not typically a hierarchy, and when we are different people can assume leadership under different circumstances, so it’s not always easy to even answer who is first in command. But my bigger challenge was explaining that everyone in our company already focuses on doing things we like and a great at.

That’s not to say that it’s all perfect, 2 days ago my streak of over 2 months with no internal e-mail was broken by my coworker forwarding something. And I don’t always know about everything I need to know about, sometimes it takes as much as half an hour to get myself up to speed by reading our internal notes if I was out of the loop for a while. And I get frustrated when, as a team we spend less than 2 days a week working on a business rather than in it. Occasionally, I have to show up even when the weather is nice, though working on our outdoor deck does make that more palatable.  But the worst part is that sometimes I have to deal with the worst boss of them all, myself, though much of the time the team saves me from this frustration.

How do I explain that to somebody who spend their life working in a traditional corporation? They simply cannot relate to my frustrations. On the other hand, I look forward to the day when they do.

Our first meetup attracted quite a few people to talk about Social Media in reaching investors. We got to know one another a bit and then plunged in to two tag teams who discussed the basic uses of Social Media on the fundamental level. James Carlson then presented an example of Prezi based video that Bucket Brigade made for PosiPair that they used to pitch to investors.

At least one business deal came out of that initial event. So, I look forward to seeing what this meetup will become when I come back from the summer in Europe.

So, after much discussion we decided to move forward with a regular monthly meetup:  Start Anything. This is a continuation of the StartupAccelerator but in a monthly format. Each month we will be covering a different topic relating to starting things, starting anything. The theme for this month is “Using Social Media to Reach Investors” and I have been asked to moderate.

We are trying out a format where everyone has an opportunity to present. To accomplish this we everyone gets 3-5 minutes to pitch their topic in front of the group. After the first hour we vote and see whose presentations might be worth the in depth look during the second hour.

This meetup will happen on the first Thursday of the Month from 6:00 – 8:00pm and should bring out some exceptionally talented people who seek to share their ideas.

Will Start Anything meetup (SAm) ever rival with TED and produce the same kind of a following? Anything is possible if we just start.

So, come and talk about the startup issues in your business, program, project or anything.

For about 8 months now I have been enjoying meeting with Mark Huber, Eric Weinberger and a few others who drop in occasionally. This unstructured hang out has been a great sounding board for all of us, precisely because there are no expectations. We like One Way Cafe precisely because meeting there does not require a structure. Last week we met Damien from Supergimp and Kurt Broun from KB Leadership and talked much about their businesses. This week I could not be able to be there, but the week after I expect something great happening again. I don’t know what, but something always does.

Feel free to join us for a conversation, just don’t bring an agenda, there are lots of other times for that.