Creative juices flowing, check!

This week's lesson was titled "Choose a Business" but I felt it could have also aptly been titled "Flip on Your Creative Juices."  There was so much information covered this week from brainstorming to absorbing knowledge from those that have done it before, so here are the highlights:

• Book review for The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell.  In a nutshell, this book is all about epidemics and how they get started and I'm not just talking infectious diseases that attack you physically.  Gladwell provides example after example to help visualize the driving forces behind epidemics; namely the people who transmit them (mavens, connectors and salesmen), the agent/infection itself and the environment of the breakout.  Who ever thought Paul Revere was an epidemic spreader or that Sesame Street was an epidemic?  I now have a different view of the term word-of-mouth and how it really works.  From a business standpoint, I think the most valuable lesson I gleaned from the book was the value of a product or service being "sticky" enough for people to want it and for infecting agents to want to spread it.
• Case study review: Boston Duck Tours-If I'm ever in Boston, I'm so going on one of these tours. It sounds like a lot of fun and I learned a lot about Andy Wilson and what he overcame to launch this business.  The case study reminded me that people don't just fall into a good business, behind every business is a story of someone that stuck to their guns and didn't give up.  http://www.bostonducktours.com/
• Points of Pain activity: After soliciting advice from friends, pondering the assigned readings and mulling over my own interests, I came up with a list of 20 ideas for my $100 challenge and 20 ideas for my "Big Idea."  I'm still pondering the $100 Challenge, but need to decide soon so that I can start etching out a solid business model.
• Here are the top 5 from each list:
• Top 5 $100 Challenge business ideas
• Sell homemade items on Etsy
• Service based business like cleaning houses or babysitting
• Sell homemade salsa
• Sell holiday goodies for Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas
• Balloon twisting

• Top 5 "Big Idea" business ideas
•  Accounting/bookkeeping Services
• Kolache bakery
• Small business consultant
• Solar power conversions for homes/businesses
• Home organizing
• Acton Hero: Tom Monaghan-First off, this man is amazing. I'm not surprised that he's better known as the founder of Domino's than the founder of the Ave Maria foundation, but I think the later contribution is more note-worthy. Kudos to Tom for sacrificing your own riches and putting other people's higher education needs in front of things of the world.