The biggest lesson I had to learn was how to fail faster… That’s why when I left Xerox at five o’clock, I would go up the street to the nonprofit charity, helping homeless kids, and I would dial for donations at night. I had a goal every night of getting rejected thirty times. The more I increased my failure rate, the more success I had at Xerox.

-Robert Kiyosaki in The Education of Millionaires by Michael Ellsberg

Thirty rejections a day! Thirty!

I do a large amount of reading, and cannot remember the last time I read something so completely stunning.

Not the fact that he failed 30 times, but that he went out with a goal of coming home with at least 30 failures.

I suppose the biggest successes are built, often on a mountain of failure. Before Microsoft, Bill Gates started a data company that went nowhere. Before Twitter Evan Williams, started a podcasting platform that was crushed by iTunes.

The concept of failing faster goes hand-in-hand with lean startup theory: fail fast, fail cheap, move on to the next idea.

My Blueprint for Increasing Failure.

It is 3 a.m. on a Thursday night (Friday morning I suppose), and I can’t sleep. I keep coming up with new concepts for organizing these “failures.”

So far, here is the plan.

I will try to test one new business concept every week.

If the concept passes a series of metrics, then it gets the green light to move onto the next phase. If it fails I tweak the campaign, or I restart the process.

Most of the testing just takes time, so it is easy to fit around my freelance projects.

I can hardly wait!

Until then the only excuse for not failing is succeeding.

[img TensaiKato]

Yeah, I said it. A Windows desktop Mac users can envy.

If you own a Mac you should probably stop reading.

You see that image above?

That is what my desktop looks like right now. It’s efficient, beautiful and has an awesome clock. The best part is that setting it up takes less than an hour. That includes cleaning all the crap off your desktop.

However, it wasn’t always that way. It was once cluttered with a mess of folders and papers in complete disarray.

Making your Windows desktop awesome.

As neat an organized of a person as I am, I admit that with a lot of projects going on my computer was an absolute mess. It was the kind of mess that you know where everything was, but a mess nonetheless.

I was doing my morning reading before an  interview, and I happened to come across an awesome Lifehacker article about rebuilding your desktop. I immediately knew that is was time to do some early spring cleaning. Before you start clicking on links over there beware! ObjectDock and StarDock really slow down your computer. Everything else here should play nice.

First thing is first, we need to organize all those folders and shortcut on your desktop. Drag the programs you use daily to the Taskbar. The ones I added are below.

• Internet Explorer
• Rockmelt
• Chrome
• Firefox
• Photoshop
• Illustrator
• Dropbox

Create a few new folders that you can organize the items into. If you can’t find a place to put it, it’s probably trash. The folders I created are below.

• Projects – Get a Job Course, Bison Box, etc..
• Project Archive – FRUGGL, School work.
• Temporary – Images for this post, things I plan on deleting soon.
• Resources – A/B Testing Calculator, Project Viability Calculator, The Boron Letters.
• Resume – I know it’s obnoxious, but I have five versions of my resume.

Now open My Computer, and navigate to your user name (Mine is Samuel Solomon). Create a folder that best describes the stuff in the folders above (I know it’s tough).

Next go to Libraries. Right click and add a new library. I named mine Projects. Now you have easy access to the stuff you use without it taking up space on your desktop.

Hopefully your desktop looks something like this now (Ignore Windows Explorer being open). If you don’t have as many icons as I do that is good, the less the better.

Now for the fun stuff.

Adding the giant clock.

Download and install the Rainmeter monitor and configuration tool for Windows. I know what you are thinking, won’t it slow your computer down? No, not anymore than the widgets you normally use, which ads about 3-5 seconds on to startup.

WARNING: Rainmeter works like a charm on Windows 7. If you have Vista or XP you may want to reconsider.

Once Rainmeter is installed. Download and install the Pragmatic 3.0 theme from Deviant Art (Download link is top right).

You should have something that looks like this.

In the Pragmatic 3.0 menu go to Launch, and left click on TIME. Right click all the other Items, as we are only using the clock.

Center the clock.

Now go download the Early Sunrise Wallpaper from HD Wallpapers. You’re also welcome to any of my pics on flickr. Simple pictures that have lines that lead to where the clock goes work best. For the sake of time I have forgone looking for the right picture. Photography nerds like me can spend hours looking for the right one. However, If you do find a nice picture feel free to post the link in the comments.

Perfect.

Except for the trashcan right?

This part is a little tricky. The solution is well documented in these links.

• How to Pin the Recycle Bin to the Windows 7 Taskbar
• How to remove the Recycle Bin from your Desktop in Windows 7

Beautiful.

If you found this helpful consider sharing it below.

Started with Matt Powell, a childhood friend and hardware genius, Bison Box creates performance computers with design as a top priority.

The website, bisonbox.com, is still under construction, but if you are in the market for a new desktop don’t hesitate to get in contact. We’ll put together something much better than Dell.

I know that writing this will give away some of my good mojo, but I think this post will be extremely useful to many job seekers.

About a month ago I began a proactive job hunt experiment – Use Facebook ads to target potential employers, and use a landing page to see if I could sell them on my potential.

I have always questioned traditional job hunting methods. Everybody is creating the same bland one column, Times New Roman, 1-inch-margin resume. How are you supposed to stand out from the pack if you do the same things that everybody else does? Even if you submit a well designed resume with decent credentials like mine, the chances of an employer calling you back are slim.

I decided to take a different approach. Rethink the channel for job candidacy. Using specifically targeted Facebook advertisements, I created different ads targeting companies in industries that interested me. I gave myself $150 and about two weeks to see what would happen.

The results? I placed my first Facebook Ads and got a phone call the following afternoon from a startup in Los Angeles (hence the post name). As a result of this campaign I scheduled five interviews, received 18 job related emails, and had others wishing me luck. I had two blog posts written about the campaign. One from Tom Singer, College Student Seeks PR Job and Goes Beyond the Normal Path to Get Noticed, which was picked up by the Texas Entrepreneur Network. The other post was by Dave Ambrose, founder of Scoop St., a company similar to FRUGGL.

 How to create your Facebook Advertising Campaign

Building a landing page for employers.

The most important part of this campaign is your landing page. This is where potential employers that click your ad will be directed. Do not simply send employers to your LinkedIn, or Visual CV page. Great advertising for a product with a terrible presentation does not lead to any sales.

If you do not have a website that you can create a landing page for go to Weebly and use their editor to create a presentable website. Weebly requires no coding experience and is my favorite of all the browser-based website builders. I have used Weebly to create landing pages to test product ideas, as well as a landing page for my internship search a year ago. It is free, easy and only takes an hour or so to put together.

I have split tested several landing pages, with the sales letter with my picture being the most effective. Many hate the sales letter look of things, including me. Every time I see such a layout I automatically someone is trying to sell me instant weight loss products, or how to get rich quick programs. Similarly it is hard to argue with results and the sales letter layout has performed the best. I am currently working on a video to test on the pages, but that is a “how to” post for another time.

Design your first Facebook Ad.

Start by going to facebook.com/advertising/ and click Create an Ad.

Set the Destination to External URL. Now place the URL of your landing page, blog, video resume. This is where potential employers will be redirected when they click your ad.

Find a picture of you and shrink it to 110 x 80 pixels, the maximum size for a Facebook Ad. Make sure it is a good one. The image is the first thing that attracts attention, thus the most important part of the ad.

Come up with a title that will grab attention. Ask a question. If you want to target a specific company mention their name in the title.

The  body is where you explain who you are and what you want. Make sure you have a call to action.

Targeting employers.

This is where you decide what employers to target. Where do you want to work? Who do you want to work for? These are all factors to consider when targeting employers.

If you want to work for a company in California, add it under location. If you want to work for Facebook, add it under workplaces (you may have to click Show Advanced Targeting Options under Connections). If you want to work For Facebook, but only in their Palo Alto headquarters add both parameters.

You will notice the estimated reach will change as you add and remove, locations, interests and workplaces. This is the pool of people that will see your ad. Try not to let your pool drop below 100 people. A small pool will make it difficult for your ad to appear.

If you don’t have a company in mind click Switch to Precise Interest Targeting. If you are looking for a general PR job, public relations should be one of your targeted interests. If you want to work at a big company human resources should be in there as well as recruiter. You can see some of my general interest targeting parameters below.

NOTE: This section includes everyone who has at least one of the interests in their profile. Someone may see this ad that is interested in #Marketing, but not #Human Resources.

Creating the campaign, and setting  the bid.

Create a new Campaign. Call it Hire me, or something of the sort. I ran my campaign for 15 days with a daily budget of $10 per day.

Click Set a Different Bid (Advanced Mode) if it is not already chosen.

Make sure you have Pay for Clicks (CPC) Selected. This will only charge you whenever somebody clicks on your ad.

When setting the bid I generally bid 10 to 15 cents above the suggested bid. In the example below I bid 50 cents per click. This gets your ad out to more people, so you can see how well it performs.

Facebook  charges less per click for ads that perform well. After about 10 clicks I move the bid price closer to the average CPC. In the example below the Price is the average CPC, while Bid is the maximum I will pay for a click.

Create more Facebook Ads!

Don’t stop now. The most efficient way to run a Facebook Advertising campaign is to create several ads. This makes guarantees that only your best ads are being seen, which costs you less in the long run.

Conclusion

I hope that some of the information in this post was useful, and that it helps somebody find a job.

As for me, I am in the process interviewing. I am giving myself to the beginning of February before I accept any offers. There are several other job search ideas I have yet to test.

…And for those  interested in the specifics of my campaign.

• Reach: 154, 010
• Clicks: 634
• CTR: 0.137%
• Introductions: 18
• Interviews: 5
• Cost: $148.42
• Run Time: 15 days

Criticism is always appreciated, feel free to comment below.

Created as part of my Style & Design final project.

FRUGGL was the first business I’ve ever created. Now that FRUGGL is officially dead, I wanted to take some time to reflect on my experience.

FRUGGL was my first foray into the world of entrepreneurship. A social coupon website, FRUGGL offered college students discounts to local shops, or restaurants every week. It was created  before all of the deal website the hype. Groupon was only in a handful of cities. I simply saw an opportunity to give deals to college students around the country.

It all began the summer of my junior year, I was working an internship with V3 Media Group doing copy writing, seo and social media stuff. During that time I discovered several startup blogs such as Mashable, TechCrunch and The Next Web. Every morning that summer I woke up and devoured every new story on those sites (yeah, I know that is a lot of reading). I was addicted.

Eventually I began experimenting with my own ideas. When I was home I was reading, researching and crunching numbers. It was during this time that I became what my friend Andrew Sims calls a “Chronic Idea Man.” I was loosing track of time and staying up until 5 a.m. putting together my ideas. When I did manage to get to sleep at a decent hour I would often wake in the middle of the night and start working.

After running through several ideas, I decided that FRUGGL was going to be my first company. The business model seemed simple , and I thought I could I could make it work. The next step was to raise money.

As talks about raising money and finding investors began to surface, I started to become worried. I was still afraid to take that step into entrepreneurship. What if I failed? That is when I consulted my father.

“What’s the worst that can happen? You’ll have a great learning experience at a fraction of the cost of your education,” he said.

My father was right, but I came away with more than just a learning experience – I came away with appreciation for entrepreneurship and a fascination with the startup culture.

Although FRUGGL was a failure, it was the most successful failure I have ever had.

What I learned from FRUGGL.

Fail Cheap, Fail Quick. Do not spend $30,000 on a project if you don’t have $30,000 worth of customers emailing you asking when it is going to be available. I did not spend near that much, but I have talked to entrepreneurs who have. My advice to first time entrepreneurs is see what businesses you can create for $1,000 and do the best you can with that. I spent several thousand developing a user login system that was not necessarily. To date I have spent less than $100 on BISON BOX, my newest project, a custom computer startup.

If you build it, they won’t come. Startups are not about putting a great “idea” out there and then finding a way to market it. Big companies can afford to do it, but you can’t. It is about solving a certain problem for a certain group of people. Your “idea” is just your hypothesis for how to solve that problem. If the “idea” is wrong, pivot and find another way to solve it.

Do not write a business plan. I spent 4 months writing my business plan for FRUGGL. It was a huge waste of time and 20 pages. Once again startups are not large companies. I should have been out talking to businesses, and getting sign ups. Just a week after the official launch I was already making major changes, not to mention there is no way to forecast sales and revenue. It is all just a well-researched guess. If you are thinking of starting a business think Lean Canvas, more than business plan.

Selling on two fronts is like fighting two wars. For FRUGGL to work I had to sell to two markets. First, I had to go out and sell restaurants and local vendors on hyper-local marketing. Then I had to sell college students on the deals. It was extremely stressful, especially while I was a full-time student, and working for The Auburn Plainsman.

My takeaways.

I am extremely critical of our education system. I was a much better student before starting FRUGGL. The more I worked on my business, the less time I had for class. I also began to take note of how little college classes actually taught me. I read every availible article on the internet’ to teach myself how to effectively run Adwords and Facebook Ads campaigns. These were such valuable tools. Why didn’t we have a class about MailChimp or Analytics? In management class we were memorizing definitions and learning useless information like Six Hat Theory.

I love startups and startup culture. It was not until I began to wind down FRUGGL that I discovered this fascinating world. It was full of ultra-ambitious people who loved new ideas. They were not always the best students, but they are always the most curious. I realized that what entrepreneurs really do is create value,  jobs and wealth for themselves and others.

I can only encourage others to go out and start work on their ideas, once you are done reading this start thinking about how you can bring your idea to life. Sell jewelry on Amazon, build websites for others, start a blog, write a book – all of these are things you can begin today for next to nothing.

Many people think that you have to be a genius to start a business. Just be obsessively curious about the world.

I have compiled a valuable collection of resources for entrepreneurs. If you are a first time entrepreneur please read my Startup Articles post. It is a collection of the most valuable reads for first-time entrepreneurs on the web. Just because I had a successful failure, that doesn’t mean that you should have one.

Most importantly I came away from FRUGGL knowing I had great, supportive friends who mean more to me than most of them know.

To everybody that helped and supported me along my journey – Thanks.

FRUGGL was my first company, and my foray into the world of entrepreneurship.

A social coupon website, FRUGGL offered college students discounts to local shops and restaurants.

I started FRUGGL my junior year of college with Dale Vaughn and my good friends at V3 Media Group. It was an experience I was fortunate to have, and tote it as My Most Successful Failure.

FRUGGL was officially dissolved in December of 2011.  Pictured below is the (unfinished) site with one of our first deals.

]]> http://samuelrsolomon.com/fruggl/feed/ 0 http://samuelrsolomon.com/ccea-logo/ http://samuelrsolomon.com/ccea-logo/#comments Mon, 07 Nov 2011 20:18:14 +0000 Samuel R Solomon http://samuelrsolomon.com/?p=494

The Crisis Center of East Alabama logo project is one of my favorite to date. Completed as part of my final Public Relations Campaigns project, CCEA needed a logo that was light, appealing and easily recognizable. I rarely use my first idea, but the tree seemed natural choice in this project. CCEA wanted to promote itself locally (even though the hotline is available to anybody). The connection between the tree and Toomer’s Oaks seemed appropriate, not to mention trees are symbolic of strength, protection and renewal. Several variations of the logo exist.

The 40th anniversary version, and the regular print versions are pictured above. The web version, featured in the portfolio section, has an inner shadow that makes the logo appear as if the logo was pressed into the background.

I have also put together a quick tutorial video that shows how to create a vector tree, similar to the one in the logo, using Adobe Illustrator.

Getting Started

How to Create a Million Dollar Business this Weekend -  Tim Ferris, Noah Kagan of AppSumo on creating a profitable idea, finding customers, and assessing their value.
How I Quickly Test and Validate Startup Ideas - David Berube founder of MoFuse. A short post that will give you  a taste of how to test startup ideas. NOTE: Contrary to what he says, I think Facebook and Google AdWords are awesome for testing.
How to Build a Web Startup - Steve Blank’s Lean Launchpad. He is an expert on starting a business with minimal risk. This is one of the most complete posts on starting a business.

Minimum Viable Products & Testing

How I Built My Minimum Viable Product - Micro-testing (testing products that don’t exist yet) won’t work for all products. Ash Maurya on putting together a MVP.
From Minimum Viable Product to Landing Pages - Ash Maurya on creating and testing landing pages.

Customer Development

Customer Development Checklist for Web Startups – Part 1 - Ash Maurya’s checklist could be the most valuable to startup entrepreneurs on the internet. It is a step by step process for building your product.
Customer Development Checklist for My Web Startup – Part 2 - These articles have been so popular that he built, Running Lean, an entire book around them.
The First Thing That Matters: Product/Market Fit
How I am Measuring Product/Market Fit

@MichaelEllsberg - Michael Ellsberg is the author of “The Education of Millionaires,” which includes interviews with some of the most successful people on the planet who didn’t complete college and who educated themselves in the real world.

@khanacademy - Salman Khan is the founder of Khan Academy, a Gates Foundation backed nonprofit that uses YouTube to provide a free world-class education to anybody anywhere.

@DaleJStephens - Dale Stephens is a Thiel Fellow, and founder of the UnCollege movement. His UnCollege Manifesto lays the groundwork for ways to acquire an education outside of college.

@SirKenRobinson - Sir Ken Robinson is a internationally recognized leader in education, creativity and innovation development. He is the author of The Element and Out of Our Minds. His TED talk Do Schools Kill Creativity? has had more than 200 million views worldwide.

@clarkaldrich - Clark Aldrich is and educational game designer, and the author of Unschooling Rules. He discusses the value of experience-based learning.

@aronsolomon - Aron Solomon (no relation) is an education entrepreneur. He is the founder of Smartswise, and is currently a partner at Futurlogic, an education venture development studio.