Joe D’Ambrose

It’s a long weekend for Columbus Day, and I’m in Baltimore with my parents, visiting my sister and her husband. In times of leisure, sometimes my brain starts ticking even more than when I’m overwhelmed with “stuff” to do at school. Senior year. Only a few months until graduation in May, and then many more rich business undertakings and whatnot as I move on through my 20’s.

Reading Fast Company as I try to get comfortable on this air mattress, I’m reading about Web 2.0 businesses, the advantages of good product design, and about media conferences taking place around the country. I found some good advice I want to jot down from an AT&T Small Business advertisement:

• Respect your customer’s time. When a customer can’t be helped immediately, tell them why and commit to a time to respond to their needs.
• Stand behind your product, even if it falls apart. Lifetime guarantees create lifelong customers who will return to your company and spread the good word to friends.
• Go the extra mile to give your clients the service they deserve. If you go out of your way to improve your clients’ experience, they’ll go out of their way to improve your sales.
• Remember the first rule of business. Don’t say “No” to your customer, instead work harder to provide the service your customers desire and chalk costs up to an investment in your company’s future.

Thanks for the advice, AT&T. I’m going to keep these tips in mind as I continue to service Normal Kings clients as well as Expedient Laundry customers.

Lastly, I wanted to comment on two great examples of entrepreneurship I witnessed today:

• Happy Feet: At a downtown festival, we passed by a bright orange booth with two friendly individuals inside. They were selling a delightfully simple product; therapeutic glycerin filled massaging insoles for your shoes. Supposedly these things increase circulation and massage your feet as you walk, helping sore knees, hips, etc. I cannot personally attest to the effectiveness of the product, but my mother is trying them out and seems to enjoy them so far. I was impressed with the simplicity of the product and the idea. You can learn more about the product as well as distribution opportunities at www.happyfeet.net.
• Robert McClintock: I was inspired by this entrepreneur/artist the first time I visited Baltimore, and once again was very impressed/inspired today as I walked through his gallery. Mr. McClintock takes photographs around various places in Baltimore (as well as Washington, D.C. and New York), and brings them into Photoshop to perform his signature smudging on the photos. They come out beautiful, and he prints them up on various platforms (card stock, pulled fabric, poster board). People are blown away by the beauty of this artwork and they can’t help but purchase their favorite scenes. Check out his artwork at http://www.robertmcclintock.com/.

I’m off to bed. More to come in a few days!

This semester has gotten off to an excellent start. One of my top priorities this semester has been developing my latest entrepreneurial endeavor and first non-profit business, Javalids, with a student team including 4 students and myself. This began as a for-profit idea that Cary Quinn and I were tossing around back in November: a small advertisement on the top of a coffee cup. We soon discovered that the model would work much more smoothly in the non-profit sector, and began to look into it. Quickly approaching Bryant’s service learning department, we realized that we can work this project into our curriculum (I’m a Sociology & Service Learning major). Three of our friends joined the team, and the 5 of us are all enrolled in two very relevant classes: Not for Profit Law and Governance, taught by Ed Pell, as well as an upper-level directed study in Sociology focusing on social entrepreneurship. With two classes relating so closely to Javalids and such frequent meetings amongst the founding members, we are moving along quickly, and learning a lot about the ins and outs of the not-for-profit world.
We’re in the process of developing a Board of Directors, and we currently have four highly accomplished professors on our advising board. We are also in the process of applying for our 501(c)(3) tax exempt status and looking to secure corporate sponsors and individual donors.

Normal Kings built a website for Javalids which can be found at Javalids.org - check it out and leave some feedback! Expedient Laundry has shared it’s on-campus office space with Javalids, so we now have some official “headquarters” as we get this company off the ground!

I saw this guy’s name somewhere in an issue of Entrepreneur magazine, later in a news release about Napster, and a while back on the Facebook’s ‘about us’ page. So I did a search for him in the Blogosphere and it turns out that he’s a Web 2.0 entrepreneur who founded or co-founded the original Napster, Plaxo, and Facebook. Now he works as a partner for what seems to be a very cool venture capital firm with Peter Theil, The Founders Fund. If you’re interested in internet entrepreneurship or the origins of companies like Facebook, I encourage you to read this blog post by Parker’s friend Numair Faraz entitled “Sean Parker as Jim Clark 2.0“. It’s an interesting read, taking us back 6 years or so into the beginning of this new dotcom boom.

What started as a Business 101 project more than two years ago has now been active for more than a year. During our first semester in operation, my partners and I were walking around all afternoon on Mondays and Tuesdays, knocking on dorm room doors for laundry. The fall 2006 semester got a lot easier. Our manager and employees did an excellent job of carrying out the operation while my partners and I observed and analyzed our processes to gain a better understanding of our operation. Just before the holidays, Bryant informed us that we were to move to a new on-campus location which will be located in Hall 4. We look forward to this coming semester. Our customers have been re-subscribing for their service and we even gained a couple of new sign-ups.

On Wednesday, January 24th, my partners and I will be making a presentation to kick-off the spring 2007 Business 101 speaker series. If you’re on campus, come check it out from 6:00pm to 7:00pm in Janikies Auditorium!