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TacoHaus

Hi people. Woooo, I am cooked! It is Monday and I am on the shores of the Bodensee in Freidrichshafen DE. Today was the typical fly-to-europe and arrive at 8am then try to stay awake all day and navigate from Amsterdam to Zurich to a Ferry to Germany. Needless to say I have not slept in many hours. (Off topic- I was able to reread all of BlueOceanStrategy during my travels and that was nice). Regardless, I am sketchy tired and super hungry.

Being this tired makes selecting dinner a real chore esp if you don't really know much basic german (how is it I know foods in Dutch -mmmm holland-Iloveyou). And because it is Germany dinner is an affair. And because I am in a holiday town everything is slow and cafeish. Don't get me wrong, cafe is fine. Tomorrow, after sleeping, cafe will be awesome. Tonight however I really just want a fast burrito, perhaps a taco? Please?

So to summarize my business idea we'll just say it's a hope and dream to bring some motherlovin' Mexican food to EU countries, specifically Germany and The Netherlands. First off these folks love pork and what better than a pork filled taco or burrito to make a young German feel the pride of home (heh, I laugh at myself sometimes). Second and most important it is uncontested space. One can find all manner of intl flavors but choice be damned when talkin' the beloved texMex or Azteca authentico. Honestly, is it simply because there are no Mexicans in Europe? Holy smokes, I walked past two cheap chinese joints and two kebab huts. I have to imagine some quick to go tacos would rock the Amadeus.

Alright, that's it. This one isn't the most well thought or argued post I've written. In fact this may be the worst post I have ever written but I do know one thing. I am tired, jet lagged and all I want right now is a burrito with guac and verde sauce. Throw in some mexi dirty rice and bam. Mexican for Europeans. LOL uncontested marketplace, period. Oh yes, it makes great sense tonight!

The Social Good and bad

Man, some weeks parenting is a real bugger. Bugger! Wait, did I say bugger? Let me rephrase cause 'bugger' sounds too Euro-cutesy. Some weeks suck to be a parent, SUCK! Some weeks are so super hard they take all your strength just to keep from blowing out and burning up. Parenting isn't easy (all the parents nod and stare blankly). Now, please know that I am not writing this to simply bitch about the hard week I am experiencing, though it does feel good to talk about it! I am writing as always because this situation points out a superb social entrepreneur opportunity.

The hard week back story- For me the reason is simple, lack of sleep. This week is all about sleep deprivation in my family and sleep deprivation makes everyone a little crazy, a little mean and a lot grumpy. Throw in full time work and my wife's consulting freelance work and you get a crabhole week.
Perhaps solar flares are messing with the cosmic peace that my wife and I enjoyed the last two weeks. Maybe it's growth spurts? Change of season? Who knows. Either way our boys have decided it's a party all night week and the house seems a giant mess and dinner is harder than usual to plan and, and, and it's real hard for dad (me) AND especially hard on Mom.

What is crazy to think about is how good my family actually has it. As I have said before, my wife is a saint and a beautiful saint at that! Everyday I count my blessings that we are stable and lucky enough that my wife can stay home with the kids only having to work if she decides to work. We aren't wealthy but we don't worry about want. Our lack of want and blessings provided got me thinking about how much harder parenting could be and that got me thinking about opportunity solutions.

Honestly, I cannot comprehend what it would be like to be a single parent raising two kids on limited means and no extended family nearby. Cooking, cleaning, working, planning, doctors appts, school, shopping, not to mention fighting with bedtime and potty training and never ending toddler questions and lack of personal time, etc etc...seriously, if parenting is hard for me it is way harder for others, especially those single parents out there who are getting by on low wage part time service jobs that make up so much of the US economy. Throw in the sleep deprivation that comes with being Mom or Dad and you get a recipe that is less than savory and frankly problematic for society moving forward.

If it takes a village to raise a child (I agree with frankly) then it also takes stable, full time jobs and companies that recognize the importance of those jobs with relation to the long social view vs short quarterly profits (yep I am talking about you American retailers and service industry).

Now, before I start taking pot shots at certain wackjobs who'd lead you to think that these single parents are lazy bones who need to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and stop being a burden on those who for reasons of luck and randomness have the means or the right circumstances have enough to take care of themselves I will make my value pitch. This time it's a non-profit, a social entrepreneur opportunity to create a social volunteer network dedicated to lending a helping hand to single parents especially during the "hard" weeks.

The non profit would link volunteers to single parents who need a little extra help with the simple things that make a huge difference during the hardest weeks such as, laundry, cleaning, babysitting and simple errands. Sometimes all a parent needs is fifteen minutes to get the dishes out of the way or one hour to get through the laundry. The parent would post a "help!" request including simple explanation of needs. The request would be broadcast to a network of approved volunteers who could pick up and fulfill the request Agile project management style. Having a helper to take care of those tasks or to run interference with the kids (chore babysitting) while Mom or Dad get the chore done would go a long way to making life a little less stressful and home life more hospitable. Details and service opportunities galore exist but the little just started cryin so...

As I said, I feel my family is lucky. We have much provided and many blessings. My wife and I have each other to fall back on. We have great community resources to fall back on as well. Still we face hard weeks as parents...maddeningly hard weeks! As I said before I can't imagine what it would be like to work all day (or night), be a single parent and raise two kids. I know people do it. I know some do it very well. It can't be easy. Hopefully, something like this social entrepreneur opportunity might help some great people get through their complex and busy day a little easier.

Ok, gotta run. Enjoy the typeO's
Chad!

Parents Fly Free...of terror

My son gets the credit for this one. An airline or range of flights dedicated to parents with small children. My little guy loves planes. He was flying from a rather young age and had over 3000 miles under his belt before he turned 1year old. With family on the east, west and mid coast our toddler is a flight veteran. He has flown into Boston enough that he announces our arrival when he see's the bay. Needless to say he always wants to go the airport and he has a few beloved toy airplanes that sleep near his bed. So tonight he points to his airplane and says, "fwy (fly) t' vacatioland...dada peopo fwy...all kids, plane has all kids dada." I say, "that's a great idea buddy!" Imagine an airline that caters to parents with small kids and flights that are listed as kid friendly...kind of like kid friendly movie times at the theater (packs a full house in Madison). I would probably pay a premium for this service and we would fly at least once per quarter if flights remained as low as they have been in the last two years.

So we are a few weeks away from visiting my parents and our son is all excited about flying. My wife and I are well, mentally preparing for the adventure. Flying with an infant and a toddler is a treat that one cannot quite comprehend without experiencing first hand. One of two things will happen. It will either be good n peacefully with the boys charming the pants of every older lady in the plane OR it will end with some sort of drama like the last time we flew to Boston. There was this jerk off 28ish year old business lady who freaked out on me because our son was putting stuff in and out of the seat back pouch. It was really bothering her...all 3-5 minutes of this behavior. She turns around in a huff and proceeds to flip out on me then she drops her seat back and starts slamming her body into to her chair smashing into my knees pinning my son who is standing between me and the chair. This is when it got real fun for me and papa bear chemicals kicked in and I literally kicked her ass from under her seat and smacked the back of her seat so hard that her head snapped back and whapped my hand while it went forward (yeah I'm not proud but that's what happened). I imagine some sort of foul words rolled off my tongue and then ended with "settle the F down" bellowing while my nostrils flared. I looked into the seat next to me and saw my wife looking like she was ready to pounce. Long story short, she freaked me out and I in turn freaked her out. When we landed I just stared her down like any good parent who's protecting his kid would do. She avoided my gaze, we exited the plane and got on with life. The adrenaline made the flight seem shorter than normal so at least one thing positive came out of that incident.

While driving north on I-95 I just started laughing uncontrollably about the situation. How embarrassing that it even happened or that I reacted that way or that I even wrote it down here for you read. The situation was really ridiculous and could have been avoided. Furthermore providing parents a way to avoid such conflicts would command loyalty above and beyond compare not to mention higher margin fares.

The customer potential- My wife and I hang out with a large group of people of greatly varying ages and none of them are from this area. Everyone is from somewhere else. Everyone has far away parents who want to see their grand kids. All of us fly quite a bit for work. We know many people just like us. The US has changed greatly, for better or worse, it is common for people to live far from family and friends. More common is flying once or more per year.

Kid friendly flights would take the edge off flying and parents would in fact fly more. They'd make everyone happier, especially veteran fliers who have come to think public settings such as flying with 200 other strangers should somehow be devoid of public experiences. Never mind the cute/adorable public advertising opportunities showing perfect doll-like children smiling while a fully branded flight attendant smiles and hands a nice milk and animal cracker snack over to a kid who is returning from the MagicKingdom or a short visit with a far away grandparent. Grandparents could be targeted specifically..."hello, we know you miss your sweet adorable grand kids, sure your kids gave you some line about flying with children being a horrible experience but no more. Now with more KidFriendly routes than any other carrier. Go on buy them that ticket with your VisaBoomerUberPlatinum card and see your grand kids..."

What more is awesome is kid friendly flights would flush out some other super innovation opportunities that are good for everyone like family bathrooms, snack food that is healthy and doesn't taste like salty cardboard, stroller tagging (no more held up boarding lines yay), milk that is fresh, car seats provided by the airlines, kid friendly security areas, perhaps nicer people (if that could be considered innovative). I could go on all night but I won't though as I read through this I am totally reminded of a sketch I did about FEDEX moving all of Business by offering business only flights. It would be magical and FEDEX would kill it. United's days would be numbered, but that's a different story.

Anyhoo. Some things to remember. If your business can pander to parents then the parents will reward you. You don't even need to provide a good product you just have to dig kids and accept that they will be kids. Great product and great kid service gets even more love. Second, don't poke mama or papa bear. Parents protecting their kids are crazed and it's all chemical. They could be the sweetest and nicest persons otherwise...especially don't poke mama bears. Third, parents are just as nervous about flying with their kids as the childless people who cringe when they see a pile of kids coming toward their gate but there is a reason they are flying and it isn't just to annoy everyone on the plane (three of my trips last year were prompted by family cancer illness-yeah don't poke the bear yo). Fourth, if you think the kid next to you couldn't get any more annoying then definitely don't have kids of your own. There is no end to how annoying a child can become to a childless adult. Parents have simply learned how to filter out those parts. They may look like bad parents to the childless but they look like people trying to get on with their life to other parents. Fifth and last, shit happens, just imagine if all that shit happened among people sharing the similar life experiences. Kid friendly flights. It is about time.

Grandpa Awesome to the future

So sometimes I miss my grandparents A LOT. Some of you may remember my post about "grandpa Awesome" where I talked about the importance of a real pic instead of a cartoon avatar...well that's the guy I miss...and his wife, my grandma. I just happened upon a blog about some bloggers grandfather who'd just passed away. They had some powerful photographs. -Rich and visually powerful pics of 90 years of life, life full of integrity and love. This made me wish I could go back in time.

Back in time wishes inspired this business idea that is basically a time machine of sorts. The business idea is this: Create a future past and past present cloud destination for interactive memories. Wtf is that you say? A place in the tech cloud where people load video, specifically 3D enhanced video such as a person can shoot and view on one of those fancy Droid phones of family events or social events.  This data would get loaded to the future past cloud. Then someday in the future the person could go to that cloud, climb inside and have a memory or two. Think ScrapBooking v2.0 meets "this day in radio history" conceptual framework and a time slider that you could flip through iPad style. The user generated content would be linked to pull data...as in news feeds (what in the world was happening on this date in) that would help to create a more whole picture of memory. Example, I remember drawing this coyote picture in early 1980's. My grandma hung that drawing on the china cabinet where it stayed for 15 more years. I'd pay to watch a piece of that history. Then, what in the world was going on in the early 1980's both macro and micro (local and national and world). Drawing a link between a family memory and historic context would only enhance the experience. It sounds silly perhaps but I pay a couple hundred bucks right now to watch video of my grandparents.

This is why someone should create such a place in the cloud for real memories. I'd offer up crazy literally years of wages to hang out with my grandparents again. Memories are priceless and that's why the FuturePast Cloud would be a killer business to flush out. 

I am too tired to write up the cash flow concept but it's not too far off from current web2.0 models modified to take advantage of the pricelessness of memory.

\enjoy the type'os i'll fix later. :)