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Mario Schulzke was born in Germany, raised with the help of his Prussian great-grandmother, educated by nuns and is in constant attempt to live an interesting life. He has lived in Germany, France, England, Spain, Montana, Seattle, Los Angeles, Portland and now Los Angeles again.
Mario is a senior director at WONGDOODY, a principal at Quillion, teaches at the Academy of Art University of San Francisco and sits on the board of advisors at the University of Montana business school. He also is the Founder of IdeaMensch.
Mario spends the majority of his free time training for an Ironman. He is incapable of writing anything funny to end this bio. After all, he is German.
What are you working on right now?
A few different things, all very exciting.
1. We are working on a number of different digital marketing campaigns for our clients at WONGDOODY. 2010 seems to be the year where a lot of the ideas that we have been talking about for years, now have the permission to be brought to life.
2. IdeaMensch. This site has quickly grown from a personal project to a real brand. I am amazed by the level of interviews that we are able to do, and all the help our community is willing to contribute. It’s humbling, really.
3. Ironman Switzerland. In July, I am doing my first Ironman in Switzerland. It has been tough to try and fit 15 hours of training into my regular schedule, but I am doing it. The goal is to finish, and that I will.
3 Trends that excite you?
1. The Internet. We’re still in the very early stages of what is going to be one of the most revolutionary technologies of all time. I am making investments (in both time and money), that I hope will pay off handsomely in the future. Imagine being in the car business in 1930, just much bigger.
2. Turning off. Everything and everyone seems to be on all the time these days. Laptops, smart phones, iPads, Kindles; it never stops. But I think people are starting to recognize the value of an uninterrupted hour/day or two or quality time spent with friends and family. We all need to turn off more often, and I am excited that people are starting to do that.
3. Anybody being able to build anything. I am neither a web designer or developer. I have no coding skills whatsoever. Yet, I was able to build IdeaMensch with a simple WordPress theme and some very basic photoshop hacking. Creating intellectual content is easier than ever, and I hope people will find great joy in bringing their ideas to life.
How do you bring ideas to life?
First let me start where I get ideas. Everywhere. In the shower, on long runs, bike rides, in the Sauna, and I even get ideas while doing Yoga. Which is one of the reasons why I am not very good at Yoga. But regardless, I try to write everything down, and then usually register some sort of url within a day or two. I own a lot of really stupid urls.
Then I do some solo brainstorms before running it by some of my good friends. If it sticks (or sometimes even when it doesn’t), I put together a list of first steps and then I start. If I remain excited and am able to build momentum, the idea comes to life. If I lose excitement or cannot gain any momentum, the idea dies. While it’s not a very scientific process, it does a great job of weeding out bad ideas and moving forward the good ones.
What is one mistake that you made, and what did you learn from it?
I’ve had some good ideas that I never gave a chance. They were just that, ideas. I talked about them, I thought about them; but I never took a first step. Regardless how great those ideas might have been, an idea that goes unexecuted is a bad idea. So, just get started.
Here is a bonus mistake. I once fell for some stupid tourist scam while backpacking through China. I spent the day with these two random dudes who told me they were doctors. We ended up going to some tea tasting shop, and I offered to pay the bill. You would think that $500 later I would have recognized it was a scam. Or that those guys weren’t doctors. That was dumb.
What is one business idea that you’re willing to give away to our readers?
My mother is going to kill me for this one. It’s her idea.
Start a bratwurst stand.
Have you ever been to Germany and had a real Bratwurst or Currywurst, served in a freshly baked roll? They are absolutely amazing. I really can’t think of many places where people wouldn’t go crazy for those.
What is one tool, book or piece of software that helps you bring ideas to life?
There are many. But you’re asking for one. So, I’ll give you one of each.
REWORK. Everybody should read this book by Jason Fried. The way we work is changing, and this is an eye-opening read on how inefficient we’ve been and how efficient we can be.
ScribeSEO. I am going to classify this as a tool. ScribeSEO is wordpress plugin / web tool that allows me to quickly optimize different posts for search engines. Most of my days are spent publishing something, and this tool makes proper optimization just super easy.
WriteRoom. I think this is a mac only piece of software. It’s basically a writing program that blacks out everything else on your monitor and forces you to solely focus on whatever you’re writing. Unfortunately, this is the only way I get anything done.
What is CareerSparx?
CareerSparx is an online course that we have developed at Quillion over the past year that teaches recent graduates how to start their careers.
I have been involved with recent graduates for the past decade, and it’s shocking to me how many never learned the basics of how to successfully start their careers. Kids are spending tons of money on school, and then they move back home and work at Starbucks. That shouldn’t be an option, and I hope that we can coach as many recent graduates as possible on how to start the careers they were destined to have.
We wrote a 60+ page free guide that you can download at CareerSparx.com.
Why do Germans love David Hasselhoff?
I knew this question would come up. It always does. Which is why I’ve been traveling the country to do a lot of public awareness work about the phenomenon who is David Hasselhoff. Check out the video below. As you’ll be able to see, focused public speaking is also not a strength of mine.
Connect:
schulzke.me (a collection of all my personal/professional endeavors)
me on twitter (me = mario schulzke)
If you want to do an interview, please fill out the participate form above. For everything else, just use our contact form above.
In case you hate contact forms, feel free to email me at mario at ideamensch [dot] com.
Thank you for visiting IdeaMensch. It means a lot to me.