Idea Sandbox: "Plan B: Part II"

Thanks for your comments... your great comments... You're hired!

You are totally right in your suggestions... Slow cooked chili is better.

However... I've not given up... I'm re-examining.

I have confidence that I would put together a phenomenal, buzz-worthy place...

This development (of a competitor getting there first) has added a huge factor into my business equation... I'd be a fool not to re-consider my original plans...

When I did my market analysis... it was pretty clear the idea was even stronger because there's nothing like it within 2000 miles. Now there's a place within 20 miles.

I'm not chickening out... I'm being smart about my plan. I want to work smarter, not harder.

Does it make as much sense to open a brainstorming place in a town that's got a brainstorming place?

I met with Kevin Hoffberg, the CEO of ThinkSpot yesterday afternoon. I had to. We are too like-minded. They've got some big plans over there at ThinkSpot and are in a different position than I am in (both financially and with an existing customer base).

But meeting with Kevin opened a different set of doors as well...

So now I'm in a spot to explore these options...

1. In Bruce's words... "Be the first in the mind of the customer. Do it better, or not at all."
2. In Adam's words... "Offer something that they don't to differentiate."
3. In the words of the old adage... "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em."

In the words of Snagglepuss... "Heavens to Murgatroid!"

Thanks folks for your well-thought words.

I'll keep you posted.

• For more context on this post... please read the comments to the "Idea Sandbox: 'Plan B'" post.
  
• For background about the Idea Sandbox, please read my original post.

Comments

[seth godin]

this is the best thing that could have happened to you... they have all the hassles and the overhead and you have the ability to be their best client!

negotiate a bulk rate, then package the service. Don't be in the space rental business [read: commodity], instead, use the space and your talent to create an effective off-site day for companies large and small.

your ability to run a workshop, to push, to facilitate, to consult... that's where the profit is and what you have to sell.

And you don't need any capital to get started

[Dustin]

You have other options as well, depending on if you want to allow more chefs in the pot.

The two greatest expenses seem to be real estate and equipment.

Your greatest assets seem to be the consultation and facilitation the "Godin Boy" mentioned, and the audiences you will attract. Why not make money off both sides? Charge for your expertise and leverage your audience demographics in order to get "cool tools" donated. If I were selling electronic white boards/motivational tools/meeting equipment, then I would love to get my products in front of Idea Sandbox attendees. If things go like gangbusters, you might even be able to charge to put something before your audiences.

Why limit this to one city? Why not franchise? Yes, it would be harder to maintain the brand. Who would ultimately benefit the most from a facility like this? Cities. Franchise this thing (license it with equipment providers) and sell it to City governments and chambers of commerce. This would eliminate the real estate expense. This is all about business development. What a great asset to any business community.

[Jason Kerr]

Wouldn't a creative space like this be a great place to experiment with and tap into the power of storytelling on a whole new level?

I've often thought about creating a gathering place for storytellers-really amazing storytellers and the occasional average teller with a really amazing story. (one of my cherished locked away ideas that I'm only sharing because paul was so cool to share his ideas in the first place)

But I never fully connected the idea with a consulting operation. Never fully thought about tapping it for teaching better marketing. But who better to benefit from personal contact with the world's greatest liars than those who spin for a living!!

Imagine a really diverse lineup of storytellers. Isabel Allende, George Lucas, Robert McNamara, Orson Scott Card, Gerald Charles Dickens, M Night Shyamalan, Baz Luhrmann, Dan Rather--think of your favorite storytellers in whatever media!

And have them TELL STORIES, cool unheard stories, behind the scenes stories, unpublished stories from their notes and journals. If they can perform, let them perform. If not, just let them tell.

Then, I don't know. Some Q&A, workshops, a discussion on storybuilding, creating drama, building interest, structure, whatever makes sense.

Audience members could reserve post performance meeting rooms to jam on what they just experienced with killer potential for on the spot ideas.

Oh me, the podcasts that you could put out! Talk about getting some attention for the place! Opens up new opportunity for revenues and marketing also. Something as cool as this could draw some interesting sponsors-online and off.

You know, or not.

[Andy Havens]

I still say that nailing a "creative work space" to one spot on the geographic plane is against the whole burgeoning mindset of our new age of virtual growth and discovery. Very 1990's. Very pre-post-post-industrialist.

OK. So Kevin has shelled out all the money to tie his dream to the terra firma. What happens when the creative juice needs to flow to where the action is? What happens when the client says, "I'm in Vegas, damn it! I'm not coming to where you are!" What happens when they want all your energy, ideas, some of your equipment, most of your people, plenty of your patented theme events... but none of the travel time? Should the CLIENTS have to all hop in a jet and come to where you are? Blech, I say! BLECH! Not very friendly, not very virtual, not very flexible.

Why not take this opportunity to be the "travelling arm" of The ThinkSpot? Be the road show version. The ThinkSHOT! Either do it on your own, or leverage Kevin's investment and offer to be his free-ranging, Marine-corps, fast-attack crew.

I've been in the best meetings of my life in tiny, cramped hotel meeting spaces with nothing but a legal pad and three geniuses and a pot of horrible coffee. It's the quality of the minds, not the quantity of the plastic swag surrounding you.

Getting your head out of your ass is a state of mind, not a state of carpets and catering. Be about that.

[Bruce DeBoer]

Johnny - I just made the connection between Thinkspot and Kevin Hoffberg. Duh. I've conversed with Kevin before. We have a mutual friend in Marianna Clampett, an Exec. VP at SAS. He always seemed like a smart dude so I see why you'd consider cutting a deal or creating an alternative plan.

I like Mr. Godin's idea.

In some ways, however, that is just as challenging but the money you would have put into real estate could help with marketing.

[Kevin Hoffberg]

I'm the ThinkSpot guy and I always thought of myself as one of the fellas in the White Hats. Fun to be vilified by implication.

I've met Paul and think he's a class act and count myself as someone who wants to encourage him.

Getting people to come to your space is probably "so 90s" to Jason's point. I have clients all over the world and thus far I have only gotten one or two to come and see me. So i'm still stuck in stupid hotel rooms without windows and crappy gear trying to send smoke signals to suggest that maybe we should think differently. But Jason's words not withstanding, the environement sets a hugely importatnt tone and i'd challenge anyone on that point. The room doesn't make the meeting nor does the meeting make the ideas, but the inverse tracks differently.

I started ThinkSpot as a sort of anthem in wood and steel, as a lonely cry in the wilderness, as a flag in terra firma to signal in some small way, "thus far and no farther." I wanted to know that there was at least one place amongst the misery of awful rooms that was set up just how I wanted it, even if nobody ever came. From less has more arisen.

Initially I intended to only share ThinkSpot with my clients who wanted to come to Seattle. If it sat all year empty, so be it. If they would rather fly everyone into some dumb hotel room near O'Hare, DIA, or in suburban Minny just becuase it was centrally located, so be it. It would still be my anthem.

Yeah, it's a big empty room with lots of paper, whiteboards, and technology, and yeah, you could spend lots more money on whizzy doodads and decorations (none of which impresses me past the first 30 minutes), but you should see it when it's filled with clients jagging on a bunch of cool ideas. I've never worked less hard and had happier clients than when I've facilitated at ThinkSpot. Everything about it signals people to be like Steve and think different. Like anything else, you have to experience it to appreciate it . . . and experience it with people in it doing what they do.

The key, as much as anything, is that the space is easily and enlessly configurable. Most people miss how important it is to be able to remake the space on the fly. It also has what you really need in abundance. Nobody thinks to rent three projectors becuase hotels charge $500 to $750 a day per. We have three and they're included in the price. The same with everything else that's in there. We went for what seemed essential and then went times Pi. Configurable abundance.

I do wonder whey there aren't more spaces like these. I've been to the ones everyone talks about. In the past, the big consulting firms all had spaces like these but they closed them down. Do you know why? They loaded them up with tons of stuff and costs which they then charged back at a heafty mark up to the engagement teams who wanted to use them with clients. So the consultants said screw it and went back to crappy cheaper rooms. So the chargebacks got higher to cover the big fixed costs. Whick accelerated the "screw it" dynamic and pretty soon they just started shutting them down.

Similarly, the people who have combined space with method (think solution people or Eureka ranch) have never sought to or been able to make the case for physical expansion. Why is that do you suppose?

Renting space was never my dream. I get paid very well to run around the globe being guru for hire or whatever it is that I do. My guess is that it will be a long time before ThinkSpot puts as much money in my pocket in a year as I make in a day consulting. But that doesn't mean it's not worth doing. It goes back to that anthem idea . . . NO MORE STUPID MEETINGS. Having said that, I think there's a viable business and a more than viable brand brewing here in ThinkSpot.

Right now, as I type, there is a group in ThinkSpot from one of the big glamour companies here in Seattle. They whined and chisseled to get the space for half price and have had one loopy demand/request after another since the moment they walked through the door. But they're having a swell time and doing the kind of work the room was designed to support and at the end of the day they were effusive in their praise. But thank the lord I hired a gem of a gal to run the place, she of infinite patience to deal with the service side of this brave little adventure. If that's really what Paul wants to do, good on him, but i'm here to tell you that I think his calling is in another direction and that's why I offered him carte blanche . . . use TS as a platform to do whatever it is you think you want to do and I'll do whatever I can to support you.

So that's my story.