I spoke last week at an Indiana Venture Center sponsored conference called Incubicity. What in Incubicity? It is a business plan competition to help Indiana form and grow new companies. What I like about these events are that people right here in the middle of America are starting real companies: Things for flat bed trucks, more efficient buring of fuel substitutes, soy products… It is proven that during difficult times people go out and start more businesses because they have no choice. And yes, I asked these entrepreneurs how do they bounce?

You can’t help but love Wendy Weiss. She loves what most of us hate- cold calling. I remember in my second company, when there was only 3 of us, I was in charge of sales. This involved alot of cold calling- which I hated. Lots of cold sweats. In order to motivate myself, I had to keep a picture of my family near the phone so I would make those calls.

In some businesses, cold calling is the way you build a pipeline of suspects and convert them to prospects.

 If you need this, if you hate to do this, if you need to be better at this join Wendy for her 8 week course, Cold Calling College. Take this quiz to see if you are ready:

Do you break out in a cold, clammy sweat at the mere thought of having to make cold calls? Do you ache with dread when you pick up the telephone to call a new prospect?Do you hang up the phone after yet another rejection, feeling like a failure? Are you worried that if you don’t get new customers soon, you may not be in business much longer?

I am.
 

I watched a wonderful documentary last night recommended by Susan Landa in Portland, OR who I met at a Capital One event. The Real Dirt on Farmer John is about John Peterson’s rollercoaster ride trying to work and hold on to the land that has been in his family for generations. I admire him because through all of his failures and successes, he was constantly pulled back to the farm where he grew up and the connection to the land. After decades of “Bouncing”, he was finally able to make it work with a cooperative organic farm. Turns out, my wife also went to school with the director, Taggart Siegel and remembers “the farm” with her days at Beloit College in Wisconsin.

Scott Allen interviewd me over IM a few days ago about the new book, Bounce! It was my first time I had done this type of interactive interview which was not by phone. I enjoyed it because while it gave me more time to think, but it still was very spontaneous. Read it here!

Scott asks some interesting questions:

• What’s the “867-5309” of the entrepreneurial world?
• But you also say in the book that you only need one great success to be remembered — that they remember you for your success, not your failures.
• You say a few things in the book that flaunt conventional wisdom, for example, “Having too much will make you stupid.”
• The book is an obvious must-read for someone who’s recently experienced a business failure. Why should someone riding the wave of success read it?

A clip from how I changed one business person’s life. Okay, so its Bill Levy, my brother-in-law and but its a start!

I have been looking back on my resolutions over the past 3 years on this blog. Last year, I gave up the difficult resolutions like not checking email so often and focused on some concrete, more realistic goals. So how did I do this year?

1. Publish my second book. Done! Bounce! ships January 28th! BTW, this was also a 2006 NYE resolution

2. Publish the audio of my first book, You Need To Be A Little Crazy! Done! It came out last September.

3. Get Katherine, my assistant and I more training. Improve my professional speaking skills. Done. We both went to National Speaker Association events. I worked with Victoria LaBalme, and Robin Creasman. I got up my new web site, brochures, video, and honed my speaker skills.

4. Take a rank promotion at Karate. Done I passed my advanced Green Belt in April with a dislocated finger, bloody toe and bruised ribs.

5. Take Pilates twice a Week. Fail. My trainer, Heidi quit the club and with my new trainer, my travel has not enabled me to do this.

2008 New Year’s Resolutions:

1. Boost Bounce! Get out there and promote the book. Practice, Practice, Practice the Bounce! Keynote speech.

2. Spend more time at our Michigan Beach House with my family. This is a place where there is no TV and no Internet…and somehow we manage to have lots of fun.

3. Take the rank promotion test to Brown Belt in Karate (maybe my last?). Do at least a Yoga minute per day with Sara.

What are your resolutions?

Not being Christian, there is not much for my family to do on Christmas Day. We usually head over to Chinatown in Chicago and then to a movie. That is our tradition.But, that may change in the future. For the first time in its history, FAO Schwartz was open on Christmas Day. The CEO defended the move saying, ”The workers all volunteered to for the shift… adding that store will cater to non-Christians, tourists and families who want a fun outing on Christmas, similar to Thanksgiving, when the store is also open and people stop by after watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade…We don’t expect huge sales on Christmas day. We recognize the message that Christmas is not about shopping or toys. We just want families to make FAO Schwarz part of their Christmas traditions.” Having the store open on Christmas may be another way to spend that FAO Schwartz gift certificate before the end of the year. That may be a tradition the CEO would love. 

When my last book came out in 2003, You Need To Be A Little Crazy, I didn’t even know I was doing something wrong. In an effort to get the book in more retail stores, I would put a copy of the book on the bookstore shelf if one wasn’t there.

Now I read an article how people are sneaking items into the store like I did- they call it Shopdropping and I thought I was so orginal!

I was quoted in the Chicago Tribune today, taking about Piggybacking about a product for Uggs boots:

“Piggybacking on an existing hit is a great way to break into retail and gain distribution quickly, which otherwise can be expensive and time consuming, experts said.

“They are adding on to a market that is already there,” said Barry Moltz, an entrepreneur and author of the business book “Bounce!” due out in January.

“A lot of retailers will want [the Boot Bop pins] if they sell Uggs,” because they will likely bring higher sales, he said.”

Technology always adds new words to our dictionary. Consider this new word from Wired Magazine:

Faceslam
v. To ignore or deny a friendship request on Facebook or any other social networking site. While faceslamming is an effective way to keep so-called trophy friendships in check, the related practice of defriending — removing somebody from an established list of acquaintances — is the ultimate snub.

Have you been faceslammed?