If you do something that provides value for others, figure out how you can charge for it. That’s the only way for you to provide that value long-term.
Mario Schulzke is the founder of IdeaMensch, a community he started to help people bring their ideas to life. Before, Mario spent 10 years managing digital strategy teams at ad agencies up and down the West Coast.
Mario is a first generation immigrant who came to America at the age of 16, much to the dismay of his family in Germany. He sports BluBlockers, did exactly one Ironman and is a proud cat guy.
Mario lives in Missoula, Montana.
Where did the idea for IdeaMensch come from?
It all started when I was waiting for my green card and couldn’t start my own business. I was so gung-ho about people bringing their ideas to life that I decided to start IdeaMensch and help them. Now I can start my own business, but oddly enough, I don’t care too much about the business-end of IdeaMensch. I am building it for impact, not income.
What are you working on right now?
I am currently organizing a 48-state road trip, 50+ events road trip to inspire people across America to start bringing their ideas to life.
It starts on July 2 and it’s by far the most challenging, the most important and most certainly the dumbest idea I’ve ever had.
Check out our road trip landing page.
We need help with mostly everything.
What does your typical day look like?
Wake up at 7, drink however much coffee my French Press bears, publish the day’s interviews, do a couple of hours of phone calls, eat yesterday’s dinner for lunch, spend all afternoon writing emails to people I know and don’t, go swim for an hour, make dinner, drink one more than my two allotted glasses of wine, attempt a few more hours of work and then fall asleep next to my iPad.
I’ve lived more balanced before, but this is my first shot at being a true entrepreneur, so I am going to do whatever I can to make it work.
What are three trends that excite you?
The Internet, people who bring their ideas to life and compassion.
I guess the Internet isn’t a trend anymore since it’s been around for a little while now. But let me tell you, it’s going to be around for much longer and the opportunities it provides for people all across the world are incredible.
More people than ever are starting to bring their idea to life. That’s wonderful. Even if those ideas don’t turn into huge businesses, starting once will make your second attempt more likely to succeed.
Compassion. Social entrepreneurs and young nonprofit leaders are popping up everywhere. More and more people want to help others. Making a living while making a living is without a doubt the greatest job anyone can wish for. I am excited about more and more people wanting that job.
How do you bring ideas to life?
Talk less, do more. I try to accomplish three feats every day. Three things that help move IdeaMensch forward. Three feats that might make me a bit uncomfortable. Three feats that aren’t boring, every day tasks. Then I keep track of them and start anew the next day. Josh Zabar inspired this.
What inspires you?
That is the easiest question ever. Everyone interviewed on IdeaMensch, everyone who reads IdeaMensch, and everyone aspiring to be interviewed on IdeaMensch. Anybody who is working to bring an idea to life inspires me.
I read our interviews every day, and those in combination with entirely too much coffee leave me little chance but to be completely jazzed to try and make a real impact with IdeaMensch.
What is the worst job you ever had and what did that teach you?
I cleaned toilets during my freshman year of college. Actually, I cleaned an entire 11-story dorm worth of toilets starting at 5:00 am every Saturday and Sunday morning. I actually didn’t mind the cleaning part (BTW, girls bathrooms are way dirtier than guys bathrooms), but it sucked to never have a real weekend. I learned to appreciate weekends.
Don’t just sit in front of a computer or TV all weekend. Go do something fun, meet some interesting people or just spend a day reading books.
If you were to start again, what would you do differently?
I’d start earlier.
As an entrepreneur, what is the one thing you do over and over and recommend everyone else do?
Don’t fear failure. It’s a lot easier to be someone’s employee than to be your own boss. When you work for someone else, you’re more likely to just do what you’re good at and largely avoid failure. You can’t do that as an entrepreneur. If you want to succeed, don’t fear failure. Learn to overcome it.
Honestly, I fail every day with something. Every day someone tells me no. If they don’t, well, then I am not trying hard enough.
What’s one business idea that you’re willing to give away?
I have always liked the idea of selling high quality sausages in America. Similar to Starbucks and premium coffee, there is a big opportunity for a high-end sausage experience. Universally, I am bullish about creating and publishing content because of the many different devices, distribution channels and audiences that exist for it. If you have an idea for a book, a video course or anything that provides value to a niche group of people, now is a great time to execute. And if it something that might be interesting to people who bring ideas to life, shoot me an email about it.
What do you read every day?
http://www.seomoz.org/blog
http://www.springwise.com/
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/
http://www.scottberkun.com/
http://andrewchenblog.com/
http://www.feld.com/wp/
http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/
What is one book you recommend?
I read a lot of books. So I’ll keep changing my answer to this. Right now I am reading Chris Guillebeau‘s The $100 Startup. Lots of inspiring stories about people making a living by doing what they’re passionate about and providing value.
What are your three favorite online tools or resources and what do you love about them?
Mailchimp for all of our email stuff. It’s awesome.
Sproutsocial for managing social media. It’s the first social media tool that I’ve logged into more than once.
SaneBox. It keeps me sane in my inbox. Literally.
Three people to follow on Twitter?
I am bad at Twitter, so forgive me for not having a terribly insightful answer here:
@ThisIsSethBlog because he only publishes his blog posts–and they are all genius. I always tell people that I want to be like Seth Godin. Then I started losing my hair, which is not what I meant with that. I still think he’s great, though.
@RainnWilson because he is funny.
@ChrisGuillebeau because he’s smart, travels a lot and is just an all-around nice guy.
Who is your hero?
My mother.
What is one problem you encountered as an entrepreneur, and how did you overcome it?
I eased into entrepreneurship due to my green card situation. That was good because it allowed me start building up an audience while I still had a recurring paycheck. But it was bad because I never had to charge for anything I did in regards to IdeaMensch.
So, I am always hesitant to charge people for what I do. That’s bad.
If you do something that provides value for others, figure out how you can charge for it. That’s the only way for you to provide that value long-term.
If you could change one thing in the world, what would it be and how would you go about it?
I’d like to end homeless here in the US. That might be a small problem in the grand scheme of things, but I just think it’s so unneccessary. Let’s build a few less F180s and allocate that money towards getting people off the streets.
Tell us a secret.
I love public speaking, but I absolutely hate rehearsing. When I rehearse, I don’t have the adrenaline that I get when I speak in public. I don’t try as hard, then I don’t do as well and then I get nervous about the whole thing.
So yeah, I am really bad at rehearsing.
Connect:
Feel free to email directly, preferably via our contact form.
If you have any questions or want to shoot me a comment about something, commenting on my page is one way to do it.
Hi Mario,
I like what you’re doing and loove the name. I’m an entrepeneur who could use a little help. O.k. alot!I started a serive called Stress Less Heal More to help people with serious health conditions as well as senior citizens reduce their financial stress so they can concentrate on taking care of themselves. No one should have to worry about losing their housing, or grocery shopping or paying for medication or co-pay assistance.
This program negotiates all re-curring household bills ( i.e. utilities, phone, credit cards, cable ) and medical bills and finds medication & co-pay assistance programs for people. In the end we can save people $1,000′s of dollars and stabilize people when they are most fragile.
Can you help get the word out for us?
Thank you,
Julie Kalb
http://www.stressless-healmore.com
760-828-7759
Julie, I love this idea. Go on our FAQ page (http://ideamensch.com/faq), grab our questions and email them back to me. mario at name of this url dot com. Looking forward to learn more about your work.
Search doesn’t appear to be working. Search for “startup” or “vc” for example don’t bring anything up.
You should have more info on the home page describing exactly what can be gained from your site. “A community of people who bring ideas to life.” doesn’t say enough. The pictures aren’t enough to draw you into what might be interesting.
Also the search box should be at the top..
LE, you are right – I need to fix our search functionality. Thanks for telling me about that.
I’ll also consider your feedback about our home page.
Hey Mario,
viele Grüße aus Hagen an den Exil-Plettenberger. Interessante Seite, ich schau sie mir morgen nochmal in Ruhe an, wenn ich ausgeschlafen bin.
Alles Gute, wo auch immer du gerade steckst (hier regnet’s gerade derbe, aber immerhin ist es warm)…