The heart-warming response and support from friends yesterday after opening the kimono on a sacred part of my life was pretty awesome. I’m really grateful to be surrounded by such a supportive ecosystem.
However, I couldn’t help but wonder about the conversion rate. That is, how many people would actually read that article and take the leap to start talking to the homeless. Far too many people read things, get excited, then take no action.
One of the product lessons I’ve learned that mirrors offline behavior is how challenging it is to effect behavioral change. On the web, this is best done by providing a far enhanced user experience with minimal switching costs.
Within the real world scenario of talking to the homeless, the user-experience of our time is far enhanced, but the switching costs are a challenge. I needed to create a mechanism to lower the barrier to behavior change. Completely unrelated, the new foursquare radar feature will do precisely this. I’m excited to observe whether this causes me to use the application more.
Armed with the ballpoint arrow within my moleskin quiver, I meditated on creating a solution over a walk around the neighborhood last night…No twitter. No email. Just violent, intentional thinking.
I wrote about my shelved foray in subscription commerce last week. What I failed to mention was that I still have a war chest of over 1,000 healthy snack items sitting in my apartment…eureka.
The challenge:
I will give anyone who has the courage to change their lives snacks to from my war chest. I’ll provide a script and methodology to approach homeless people. Keep the snacks on you, memorize the script, and start engaging with homeless people by bearing these gifts. I’m giving you the blueprint and tools; I just want execution.
Rules:
Participants need to take this seriously. I’m setting up an accountability system so that they do. For every two snacks you take, I’d one picture of you with you’re new friend or a brief account of the interaction. I expect you to use 10 snacks within a two week time period. That’s 5 interactions a week. I will continue to give these out until I run out.
If you enter the challenge and fail to meet these requirements you will have bad luck for 15 years, lose your job, your current boyfriend/girlfriend will dump you and start dating your former boss, and you’ll never meet anyone that you want to date ever again. Also, you will smell really bad for the rest of your life.
Not really, but only reach out to me if you’re serious about this. I’m not seeking poor entrepreneurs who want free snacks.
If you have a heart for the people that most New Yorkers so nonchalantly walk by everyday and want to change your life I challenge you to join me in this challenge. The rewards will far outweigh the 3 minutes you lost at your desk each day.
