Sometimes it’s hard to remember that successful innovation most often derives from a series of failures. I found this interview with chef David Chang, of Momofuku restaurants in NYC, to be a welcomed reminder.

His notoriety has spurred from his collection of highly successful Momofuku restaurants (Ko, Ssam, Noodle Bar, & Milk Bar) in NYC, as well as his recently published cookbook. Though many have labeled him as the most innovative chef in NYC, Chang is the first to admit that he is NOT the most talented of his NYC counterparts. He attributes his restaurant’s success to his team’s ruthless passion and openness to making big mistakes. Chang’s style epitomizes the mentality that success requires thinking big and, more importantly, putting yourself out there.

In the words of marketing guru and entrepreneur, Seth Godin:

Genius is actually the eventual public recognition of dozens (or hundreds) of failed attempts at solving a problem. Sometimes we fail in public, often we fail in private, but people who are doing creative work are constantly failing.

I hear a lot of entrepreneurs talk about failure as a right-of-passage. As if you can’t be successful or launch a successful company until you’ve failed at least once. I think this is the wrong interpretation. Instead, failure (big or small) must be an ingrained part of the innovation and creative process. Not just something you do once and then get out of your system. Mistakes provide opportunities to change direction towards something better.

As Chang says, his team’s strategy is “throwing whatever will stick on the wall . . . from there, its a progression of accidents to where we get.”

I like this guy.

If you liked this post, please pass it along and share it via facebook, twitter, or google buzz!

Why are sleepless nights, late evening fast food dinners at the office, and unused gym memberships the badges of honor for driven entrepreneurs and aspiring business leaders? Believe me, I’m the worst offender. I realize there are only so many hours in a day and only so many hands to do the work, but at what cost? Is the strain of overworked, malnutritioned, and out-of-shape employees (and founders) a critical weakness that’s all too often under-appreciated and overlooked? I think so.

Instead of a glorified right-of-passage, shouldn’t lack of sleep and poor nutrition be seen as the achilles heal of a company? We meticulously protect our servers and laptops with virus firewalls, optimize our software with the latest advances, and barricade our intellectual property with expensive patents and litigation, yet we let our core assets, our employees and team, flounder on half-functioning brain activity and depressed endorphins. Personal health needs to become a core competitive advantage, not an unfortunate casualty of success.

This is how Gary Erickson of Clif Bar maintains his competitive advantage.

Clif offers its 182 Berkeley employees 32 fitness classes a week in an on-site gym/studio, supports two and a half hours per week of on-the-clock workouts, and reimburses up to $350 for race fees. Two full-time staff trainers provide one-on-one sessions and coordinate with the company’s wellness manager to create constantly evolving athletic programs; this spring, one trainer gave dawn-patrol surfing lessons. “We ask people what they want,” says Clif’s strength-and-conditioning coach, Stephanie Wu, “and management encourages us to give it to them.”

Exercise improves what scientists call “executive function,” the set of abilities that allows you to select behavior that’s appropriate to the situation, inhibit inappropriate behavior and focus on the job at hand in spite of distractions.
“I like to say that exercise is like taking a little Prozac or a little Ritalin at just the right moment,” says John J. Ratey, MD, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

Business efficiency and productivity enhancements ranging from sugar/caffeine consumable products to management consultants are multibillion dollar industries driven by businesses striving for this same level of “executive function” and greater efficiency in production. But, instead of cheap parlor tricks and management gurus, what we really need is better feeling, well rested, and happier workers. No amount of venti sized Starbucks or 5 Hour Engery shots can sustain the same level of cognitive brain functionality as a full night’s sleep. In fact, studies conclude that sleep deprivation is just as dangerous as excessive alcohol when driving. Do you want a drunk behind the wheel of your business?

It’s about time we all take a look at how our work life is affecting our personal health choices. And, more importantly, how our personal health choices are affecting the growth of our businesses and careers. Your body is the greatest tool you will ever own. Your brain is the greatest advantage you will ever have. Take care of them.

If you liked this post, please pass it along and share it via facebook, twitter, or google buzz!

What’s more important than perfecting your pitch? Perfecting your question.

Forming strategic partnerships, especially early on, can be the catalyst necessary to take a new business from year 1 to year 2. However, pitching a potential business partner can be tricky, especially if they are an industry incumbent and you’re the new guy on the block. The common advice, recited so often that it’s become business strategy cliche, is to “put yourself in their shoes”. Think about the other side’s needs and formulate a pitch to match.

The problem with this approach is we often assume what the other side’s needs are instead of explicitly asking. When structuring a pitch, the difficulty lies in removing yourself from the hype of your own business. When you’re in the trenches eating, breathing, and living your business, removing yourself completely enough to gain the perspective of an outsider is near impossible. Those that do remove themselves, tend to only go half-way and formulate a pitch through the blurred vision of a self-biased strategy and unproven assumptions of the other party’s needs.

In real life, you never assume to know the exact needs of a stranger, so why make those same assumptions in business. When you want to know how to help somebody, you ask them.

i.e. In an attempt to partner with local organizations and acquire speaking engagements to lift our firm’s brand awareness, I tended to pitch the knowledge base and expertise of our consultants. This was the wrong approach. Most event organizers receive pitches like this everyday. What they really needed was someone with enough flexibility to fill the gaps in their excess time slots. Their problem wasn’t lack of expertise, it was excess capacity. I would of realized this if I had taken the time to ask.

Biz match-making is hard. Sparks only fly when two parties find independent solutions to individual problems by teaming up. If you can determine how to solve the other person’s problem first, then maybe they will agree to help you solve yours. But, you’ll never fully understand their problem until you ask.

Leave the pitch for later. Perfect your question first.

I harp on the power of the internet as a tool for philanthropy a lot. It’s hard not too. The increases in communication and financial payment platforms on the web have crushed the barriers that used to block access to third world countries. Now, anyone can set up an online fundraiser to support one of thousands of different charities in less than 30 mins for $0.

Here is an easy opportunity to lend your monetary support for relief efforts in Haiti, and have a blast doing it. Instead of spending that $30 at the bar on Friday night . . . well, still spend it at the bar. Just be sure to do it at the Hope 4 Haiti Happy Hour tomorrow.

If you DO NOT live in Chicago, or can’t make it tomorrow, please visit our Hope 4 Haiti Happy Hour page and make a small donation. All funds raised will go directly to relief efforts on the ground through the organization Save the Children

All donations up to $600 will be matched by our anonymous donors! So please give, even if you can’t make it to Chicago tomorrow!

If you DO live in Chicago, please join us this Friday evening at 8pm for our bar special at High Tops bar in Lincoln Park. $30 gets you in with a wristband and drink specials all night. %100 of proceeds go to Save the Children! Details below.

Details:
Date: Friday, January 29
Location: High Tops: 2462 N. Lincoln Ave, Chicago [website]
Time: 8pm
Deal: From 8-10pm, $30 all-you-can-drink domestic drafts and well drinks, as well as $2 shots and $5 bombs. From 10pm to close, its $3 you-call-its with that wristband. Appetizers will also be served.
Charity: 100% OF MONEY COLLECTED WILL GO TO SAVE THE CHILDREN’s DIRECT EFFORTS IN HAITI [http://www.savethechildren.org/]

Bonus: Anonymous donors will match the first $600 of donations!

How It Works:
Donations will be collected through our FirstGiving.org donations page and at the door of the event. Please print your confirmation email from FirstGiving.com and bring it with you on Friday to collect your wristband. ONLY donations of $30 or more are eligible for the drink special!

Who to contact with questions?
Allen Burt: burtra@gmail.com
Allen Penn: allen.penn@gmail.com

Thanks!

Last week I received an email with photos from the crew at Big Brother Mouse in Luang Prabang, Laos updating me on the reading programs we funded through the Library For Laos campaign.

For those that don’t know, Library For Laos was a blitz fund raiser run by Ryan Graves and myself last spring to fund reading programs and book purchases in poverty stricken northern Laos. As a result and with the help of a local Laos non-profit called Big Brother Mouse, we were able to donate enough money to fund 6 reading programs and 6 mini libraries providing over 600 books.

I was in Laos at the time and documented the 1st reading program on the libraryforlaos.org blog, but below are photos of the remaining reading programs and villages funded by the campaign.

During these reading programs, students are introduced to the idea of “reading for fun” – a concept foreign to many of these children as they have never seen a book before or only have access to old school textbooks. At the end of the reading lesson, all of the children get to pick a book of their own to take home. In addition, a mini-library of books is set up at each school so students can swap out old books for new ones. Over 100 books are left at each school.

Thanks so very much to everyone that participated in the fund raiser last spring! We hope you enjoy the photos!

Village: Ban Sopcham

Village: Pik Nyai

Village: Ban Nangiu

Village: Ban Samphansai

Village: Ban Meuangngoikao

Village: Ban Dornsai

It can sometimes be difficult to explain to friends and family the power of Twitter, so I’ve resorted to telling them the following story. Furthermore, this story serves as a micro case study as to why Kiva.org needs better social media integration.

How We Raised $550 for a Lady in Cambodia in 7 Hours Using 8 Tweets

Back in August of this year, I teamed up with a good friend, Mike Berner (@michaelberner), to run an experiment involving twitter and the micro-lending website, Kiva.org. For those that don’t already know, Kiva is a lending platform that allows individuals to make small loans to impoverished entrepreneurs around the world to help them start or grow businesses.

Mike and I decided to contribute a total of $125 to a young woman in Cambodia, name Mouen Sory, to help her expand her fish vending business and take care of her 3 children. However, after our $125 contribution, Mouen still needed to raise an additional $550 to reach her original loan request.  Enter our Kiva – Twitter fund raising experiment.

The experiment: Raise the remaining $550 of the loan using twitter to direct people to a blog posting about the campaign and encourage them to lend through the Kiva.org webpage.

The results: 8 tweets and 7 hours later the entirety of Mouen Sory’s Kiva loan had been funded! The small amount of time it took to accomplish this is a testament to the power of twitter both as a platform and as a network of engaging users willing to retweet and promote worthwhile causes to their personal networks!

My reason for telling this story is to 1) harp the benefits of social media as a tool for philanthropic fund raising, and 2) encourage Kiva.org to integrate twitter (and other social media) into their platform.

With a few simple snippets of code, every person that makes a Kiva loan could be presented with the option to ping their facebook friends and twitter followers with something like this:

If anyone from Kiva is reading this, I’d love to see it happen! And, I’m sure there are plenty of socially conscious developers out there willing to give you a hand. If you need help recruiting a few, I’d be happy to ask around. Shoot me a message via @allenburt, or leave a comment on this posting.

Last week Fred Wilsion (@fredwilson) posted on his blog, AVC.com, about the movement of Social Commerce – the shift to an evermore social and interactive form of commerce on the web. He declared Etsy.com as the web’s closest equivalent to a real life open air market place, like that of the San Telmo market in Buneos Aires (see photo above).

His post got me thinking about the direction of ecommerce in the decade to come. In the last decade, we’ve seen an incredible evolution and diversification in the ecommerce space. We’ve seen Amazon.com with their “one click” shopping system take the hassle out of shopping online. We’ve seen virtual goods sales exceed those of real life equivalents in virtal worlds and online gaming platforms. And, recently, we’ve seen “mom and pop” style artisan stores gain an internet presence on sites like Foodzie.com and Etsty.com.

The evolution is easy to comprehend. Simply enough, the spectrum of shopping experiences online is beginning to mirror the same spectrum of experiences that we can find in real life today.

Whereas 10 years ago all ecommerce platforms looked and interacted with users in exactly the same way, today the way you interact with a site that sells you books is very different from a site that sells you food. And, in the decade to come, these experiences will continue to evolve and diversify to match their real world counterparts . Not all online shopping will conform to the most efficient check out process (like amazon), nor will it necessarily become more social and interactive (like Etsy.com).

In the real world, I don’t want to interact with a salesperson when I buy shoes or books. I want to make my purchase and get out the door. That same criteria holds true when I’m shopping online. And, Amazon.com and Zappos.com have designed their platforms in a way to meet that criteria – with simplicity and efficiency at their core.

However, when my girlfriend (@jessicadaniels1) purchased a unique bracelet in the San Telmo markets of Buenos Aires last summer, she wasn’t in a hurry. She wanted to haggle with the seller, see all of his products, and hear the story behind his jewelry shop. She wasn’t just buying a bracelet, she was purchasing a unique experience and a memory of that day and our trip. An experience that, currently, can not be fully replicated on the web.

Efficiency is easy to create on the web. A memorable, unique experience is not. I’m excited to see what innovations the next decade produces in the “social commerce” space.

“But, we’re in the relationship management business. We don’t need a strong internet presence.” . . .

I hear it all the time from former colleagues and friends in the consulting business. Guess what folks, this isn’t 2002 anymore. An internet presence isn’t just for e-commerce and tech startups. Today, relationships are initializing for the first time via internet introductions and traditional consultants need to learn that there are more ways to sell your services than meeting someone face to face.

In consulting, networking and face-to-face interaction continue to be the name of the game – make a connection and build the relationship gradually over time. There are plenty of competitors out there and client retention requires frequent contact and communication. Most firms believe that (besides email) the internet as a relationship management platform comes in a far second place to pounding the pavement. And yes, personal interaction is vital to acquiring and maintaining clients, HOWEVER a sizable internet presence will increase your firm’s visibility as an expert in a field, lift brand awareness, and, in turn, make those initial cold calls or prospective client meet-ups 100x easier with increased conversion rates.

Your consultants already host speaking events to increase their credibility and visibility, why not record those speaking events and host them on your website? Your consultants already co-publish industry papers and articles in trade journals, why not provide the same content in a SEO friendly form on your website or run smaller more frequent industry news on a blog? You could host industry events calendars and interactive webinar presentations that allow clients to interact on your site, etc. The list goes on.

A dynamic, interactive web platform chalk full of top industry specific information is a gold mine for researchers, journalists, and potential clients.

In an industry that’s saturated with competition, placing yourself as the online information and knowledge center for your field of expertise will pay dividends well into the future. Even better, once you attract a digital audience online, you can see how well your efforts convert. Imagine having statistically significant data to show how well your “relationship management” efforts convert to new or continued client engagements. That’s powerful stuff that very few in the consulting industry are utilizing today (I’ll write more on this in the future).

Speaking engagements, client dinners, and hand shakes happen once. Quality web content is timeless, viral, and measurable. Utilize it.

Walmart may have run your local family owned grocery out of town, but they did not spell the end to Mom & Pop businesses. Another type of small family business is making a notable comeback, and they’re doing it on the web.

Artisan food and craft producers managed to survive the corporate invasion of small town America through unique product differentiation and offering higher quality with a much better story attached. Which sounds better to you? Ground beef from the back top shelf at Walmart . . . or 100% grass-fed Black Angus steaks from the open pastures of southern Missouri – hand cut by 3 generations of the Menefee family?

As the big box store behemoths moved into town, their low cost production and inventory methods made it near impossible for small family businesses to compete. Any store competing solely on price didn’t stand a chance, and, as should happen in market economies, eventually went the way of the dinosaur. The small town markets were shaken up and people began demonizing the corporations for exterminating small family business as we know it. At least, up until now.

With the help of a few technology startups like Etsy.com and Foodzie.com, these small family businesses are taking the big stage through user friendly ecommerce shops that aggregate artisan products from producers all over the country – giving customers a one-stop-shop for all their specialty product desires and giving artisan producers a podium to tell their story. Whether it’s hand-made lace from Virgina or fresh maple syrup from Vermont, it’s all there.

Quality products with a story to tell have always been important and will never be fully replicated by big box store producers. I believe we will see a much greater revival of Mom & Pop style small businesses as they start aggregating on the web. This is only the beginning.

The power of the consumer collective is raging full steam ahead and Groupon.com is cleaning up in its wake!

The Chicago based startup, that offers extreme discounts on local products if enough people opt-in to the deal, just announced a series B round of financing of $30 million. Their success over the last year can be attributed to a firm understanding of the consumer psychology.

The magic formula is part economic theory and part social psychology. Groupon offers extreme discounts on local products to consumers by acquiring the critical mass of participants necessary to drive down the customer acquisition costs for businesses, and therefore, increase the profit margin. This increase in profit margin is then shared by Groupon, in the form of high commission rates, and consumers, in the form of discounted products. However to attain this critical mass of participants, Groupon ingeniously calls on the individual user to spread the news of deals virally, as users require the help of the collective group to receive the deal themselves.

Groupon has changed the economics of consumption. Purchases are no longer personal self-interested actions. They require group participation.

Groupon addresses the local small business niche – a group that would not otherwise have the exposure or consumer base to reach a participant critical mass and the economies of scale to offer such deals.

However, Groupon’s success begs another question: what untapped opportunities are there for larger corporations that DO have the necessary exposure to create a viral buzz on their own? For example, what if airlines could offer specials, similar to Jet Blue’s Unlimited Flight special, that require a certain number of participants for the deals to take effect?

Consumers would win in the form of amazing discounts on quality products, and companies would win in the form of powerful RISK-FREE, low cost campaigns that increase sales and improve brand awareness.

And who doesn’t like a win-win?