While nowadays I am used to hearing people going to crowd funding as a source to get funding for their business or projects the notion of people using it for their personal lives is a bit more foreighn to me. While watching the news today a story came up about a couple who was trying to have a baby through In-Vitro Fertilization where it is obviously expensive an so they went to a site called gofundme to try and raise money for it. You can see their posting here: http://www.gofundme.com/icanhazfamily

It made me think too where if they can get this successful why wouldn’t more people try to do it for things like a student trying to get money for school or asking people to help pay for a wedding? The first reaction I heard was that no one wants to look like a beggar and so this usually turns people off of the idea. At the same time I would say this is one of those you don’t know if you don’t try situation. I wouldn’t be surprised too where if someone asked for help to buy them a bag of potato chips that it’s not too far fetched that there is someone out there who would be willing to do it. At the end of the day it’s just another way to potentially get money.

This was kind of interesting. There was a business owner who pretty much didn’t let anything stand in his way to make a profit. He always viewed his competitors as people who he shouldn’t take lightly as in his mind if they had a choice they would have no problems putting him into bankruptcy to take all the profits themselves. He wasn’t afraid to show it too and he would often gloat about outsmarting people.
Then one day for a particular competitor he saw a site where the owner talked about how he started the business to take care of his family and all with one of those made for tv stories. Afterwards, he then said because of that and knowing how hard the person has worked to feed his family he couldn’t imagine trying to put that competitor out of business.

What this immediately made me think of is how simple it was to get the person to not think about things purely from a business point of view even if it meant hurting his own pocket. The other is how everyone can easily do that where you share a little bit of a background story on how the company was founded where odds are people will relate in such a way like this where it will work to your advantage. I’m sure most people can tell if it is a phony story too. But that personal touch sure can go a long way when people start seeing the human side to a company.

Kind of reminds me of that recent celebrity apprentice season where everyone was rooting for Bret because of the personal events in his life.

I was having a conversation with a person today who ran these classes where for the longest time the students have been starting class at an afternoon time. This is just one of those part time weekend classes type of setup in a private institution. As it turns out, the instructor has one heck of a time making it at that time as he actually has a bunch of family tasks to take care of.

The other person’s partner was saying that he shouldn’t kill himself and that if he needed to adjust his schedule for the class to start later then that is what he should do. He was just worried that all of the students would react negatively to it. As it turns out, that wasn’t the case and so the change was perfect.

I thought that was a good example on how many times you can adjust your professional life to better accommodate your personal life as well. When you think about it, for the most part people work or start businesses like this to help enhance their personal life anyways.

I was reading a story about a mom blogger at Dooce.com and how she has pretty much spilled out her life journey on that blog. It looks like there is everything from parenthood to issues with alcohol and employment. There was an interesting note about the whole story and how she eventually started to make about $40,000 to $60,000 a month through advertisements on the blog. Essentially, her readership started to skyrocket when she began to blog about some extremely hard times in her life.

What that topic brought up was how it basically took something extremely negative in order to garner the attention to produce what she has today. As well, I was watching a video interview on how so many mom bloggers are writing part time to make themselves an income. When you think about it, would the same have held true if her story was simply bubbly and happy instead? My guess would be probably not.

Kind of reminds me of a lady on this panel before where the topic was about Internet communication and she was specifically writing about dating and her personal relationships online. Apparently, it wasn’t until she had some kind of a big fight with her boyfriend that she started to get thousands of visitors and attention. She even said it seemed like no one cared too much when everything was all and well.

That should make you think too if you were planning to do something like this where you figured it would be nice to earn an income from it. If you are specifically aiming to make it a career of sort, you pretty much have to be prepared to spill yourself in some way. Unless you are already a big name or have some kind of network to leverage off of.

And you know, for those of you who are in debt too, this can actually be a good way to help you get out of it where you will be scrutinized by hundreds of people and at the same time possibly earning some money while you’re at it. Example, talk a bit about your finances and your goals. The possibilities are endless for a wide range of topics too. But if you are to learn anything from this it’s that everyone has a story to tell and if you are willing to reveal it you never know where it can take you personally and financially. Just be prepared for all the negatives and positives that come with it.

I went to get a haircut yesterday from the usual people that I have been seeing for awhile now. It’s good too as the couple who do the haircuts also owns the business. Ever since they moved their operations to downtown we would often talk about business issues such as the cost of leasing a space. They pick my brain in regards to what I thought about some of their expansion plans which is always fun as I also get to learn more about the industry they are in too.

I guess when you get comfortable relating to people on specific issues that you tend to want to know more about their everyday life events. As a result, it seems like every time I drop by now they always ask if I have found the right girl even though I mention before that I don’t exactly go actively looking since I am focusing more on business while trying to learn and experience as much as I can in life at this point. This then brought up an interesting topic as I asked him when he got married and whether or not he tried to get his business established first before diving into a married life. I would imagine it must be something that requires a lot of your time and energy while creating additional financial challenges.

He then told me that he got married when he was 28 and in no way did he even consider trying to get the business fully established first before doing so. His reasoning was that it takes a long time to do and that if he had waited he would be too old by then. Instead, he wanted to find the ideal person and then try to grow and establish it together with women in his life. That was an enlightening way to look at it I thought.

I’m sure people have different views on this as I’ve seen things work with various directions. Whatever works I guess. Towards the end he kind of implied in a joking way that I should start looking soon. I re-affirmed my current direction and that if I meet someone then great, but I would rather stay focused on certain things to make things simpler for the time being.

Then came a funny part as when I said that he kind of stopped cutting my hair for a moment and said if I was seriously considering because he has a list of a lot of people he would send my way. The only witty response I could think of was I asked him if his plan was to add dating services to his business and that he was trying to use me as a test subject.