Three Ideas

I recently posted about wanting to start a business in order to exercise parts of me that have been sleeping in San Francisco. I realized I already have three ideas laying around.

Idea #1 - A queue system for libraries. Sure, you can reserve books now, but you can't stack 'em up and take one off when you return the previous one. This would also mean doing away with late fees and due dates. Eventually people could get suggestions on what to read next. A later version might even include a subscription sevice where books get mailed to your door - keep in mind people don't read nearly as fast as they can watch a movie.

Pros: This is the kind of idea that could make a lot of money. From money that users, advertisers, libraries could potentially pay, there's all kinds of revenue streams. It's also the kind of thing that could unify a divided national library system, and breathe new life into dead-tree books.

Cons: This is the kind of idea that costs a lot of money.There's also a high bar to get libraries to change the way they do business. I feel like the sales/implementation effort would be far greater than any technical effort. Also, the market is really saturated - there's tons of card-catalog vendors as well as many new services that are "netflix for books" that aren't connected to libraries. I'd also need to get into the world of Venture Capital, which I understand how it works, but I don't know where to start.

Idea #2 - Puppy Rental. I swear I posted about this idea months ago, but I can't find it now. Anyway, the basic idea is that girls find puppies cute enough that they'll stop and pet 'em. Dudes in the city may not have time and space for a dog, but that doesn't mean he couldn't benefit from an icebreaker, so he comes to me, rents a puppy for the afternoon and walks him in the park. The service encourages being honest when she asks if it belongs to him, or he can say "I'm walking it for a friend". But if he finds himself on the hook, or they fall in love and want the dog that brought them together, the pups would be for sale when they got beyond puppy size.

Pros: Cute girls, getting a fellow man a date, puppies, and fairly easy to start up. A great business for a crowded city.

Cons: Not really a cash cow. One person could make a living with 20 dogs, but that's a lot of dogs. Plus I feel like some animal rights people might take issue.It would also mean moving somewhere that I could have a lot of dogs, and be close to a park.

Idea #3 Fencing Club to end all fencing clubs. 3 stories, 8 strips per floor. Pro shop. Locker rooms with showers. Rent floor space to the college(s), local club(s), and high school(s). Always have the best floor, best equipment, be where the best want to go. maybe even toss in an on-site residence or some temp housing for visiting coaches.

Pros: I know fencing really well. Really well. I've run a smaller scale business like this before. I really like good fencing. I also feel like this would be a "if you build it, they will come" kind of thing.

Cons: Making money in fencing is hard. The building/land in Indiana would be $1mil at least. It isn't the most expensive idea on the list, but it probably has the longest recuperation time. Since this isn't really a "get rich quick" plan, it means I'd be looking at business and personal loans to get this idea off the ground.

Self Identity and Self Worth

I thought for sure I had once written a post about how, on dating sites, people identify themselves by their profession. Now I can't find that post. Anyway, the idea was that a person may say "I am a lawyer downtown." as their opening line, but if you take away the profession of lawyer from the universe, there is hopefully still a full person left behind. Who is this person? Does he enjoy debate? Does he seek the truth? Does he feel wronged by society? To me, this person knows what he does, but he does not understand who he is. Therefore, he cannot understand why he chooses to do the things he does.

Today, if you ask me who I am it would be more correct for me to say, "I am William Leleand Read", than it would for me to say anything else. I am a person who enjoys company at a meal, and seeks to learn new things, who strives for happiness in self and those around me... But I didn't always answer this way.

From 2000 to maybe 2006 or 2007 I was a fencer (or a ref, or a coach, or a club owner, but it was fencing related). My identity and fencing were so intertwind that when things went poorly in fencing, everything went poorly. When something threatened my ability to fence, my own concept of self was a risk, or so it seemed. If someone did a poor job of running a tournament, they instantly found themselves on my shit list. If someone quit fencing, it was incredibly hard for me to keep up a friendship with him or her because I no longer had anything in common with that person, or so I felt. If some family event conflicted with fencing, I internally questioned how they could expect me to make such a choice.

Conversely, when things were up in fencing, things were way up in Will-land. If I ran a tournament that brought in hundreds of fencers or thousands of dollars in club funds, or even just got compliments form the participants, I'd be on top of the world. Nothing could harm me if the latest beginner class had a high turn out. I'm sure at those times, Will Read the fencer was a lot of fun to be around.

I don't think I fully understood how much my identity and fencing were connected until I first withdrew from my fencing home and moved to Cincinnati. I made trips back to Lafayette to "check up on my clubs" almost every month. I felt lonely and out of place because the local club in Cinci didn't recognize me for the fencer I thought myself to be. Ultimately I moved back to Lafayette to fence full time, and it was then that I knew what I was without needing to change.

I wonder now if I could go back through my blog entires and see myself taking the steps to separate my identity from fencing. Somewhere along the lines I remember making a list of things I had been wanting to do ever since I got out of college. Things like "learn to dance" and "take a glass class" were on the list and when I asked myself why I hadn't done them, the answer always came back to one thing: fencing. I was at that point a fencer who wanted to be a William Leland Read.

In June of 2008, I left fencing. I don't know if I will ever be able to safely maintain an independent identiy and still hold a foil. That day may come eventually, but that day is not today. I write this because I worry about some of my fencers who appear to be heading down my path, a path I no doubt led them to. My hope is not that they quit fencing, but that they recognize where they are, and can use the advanced notice to strike a healthy balance in their own life that I could not.

My Shirt

It says "Kiss Me I'm Irish". The first and only thing people, usully dudes or married chicks, ask me is, "are you really Irish?". The answer is, "yes", I'm 25% Irish, but that's not the point.

The people who ask aren't going to kiss me, so clearly they aren't concerned about being defrauded by a false Irish man. So my only concern is that they are concerned I might coerce a kiss from someone else under these pretenses and so they are acting as Irish police. What would they do if I said, "There's not a single Irish bone in me!"? Would they confiscate my shirt at that point? Would they report me to some central agency which would inhibit my buying of such products in the future?

Is it really so bad for me to just want to be kissed for being who I am? Looking at it that way, it is probably one of the most sincere things I can put in a shirt.

"Kiss Me, I Wrote a Blog Post"

It Ends Where I Began

It's official, Greater Lafayette has a fencing class on the books. Back in my college days, I didn't feel I was ready to run a business of my own, I just wanted to coach. I talked to the Parks and Rec group and was turned down because of liability issues. Now, years later as I am waving goodbye, it seems the P&R will be the very thing that keeps fencing alive in this city. It seems comically ironic. Transitioning from a club with permanent space and is run by me to a club with no real home to speak of and coached by someone with a different style should be interesting for the membership. I think from here on out is the part where I hold my breath and hope for the best.

What Will Your Fencing Be?

You are all fencers. From this sport you gain some form of enjoyment, some reward. So that you can have that, other people have stepped forward, they took some initiative. Why? The people who have made it possible for you to fence, they are some of the greatest people you can know, but they've made sacrifices so that all of you can enjoy the sport.

You are the new leaders. You are the people who will be caring for your sport five years from now, ten years from now and beyond. Will the sport grow? Will you be able to fence where you move? Will you continue to have challenges? Will you share this sport with others? Will you? You get to decide.

You get to decide if fencing is offered in your school. You get to decide if your hometown will host a well run event, or if those events will fall apart when it relies only on one person. You get to decide if new innovations will come to the equipment we use. You get to decide if the US, your state, your city, your street gets to show the world how much you love your sport.