My Project “Fame”

I just read the remarkable story of Jia Jiang (link to his LinkedIn account) who was paralyzed when he failed to attract an investor for his start up. He overcame this obvious loss inadvertantly into a win! How did he do this? You can read about it here but basically he arranged for himself a 100 Day Rejection Diet. On his first day he peevishly asked a security guard in a building for $100 and runs away as soon as the guard, obviously, says “No”. It is quite entertaining to watch these 3–5 min clips.

Watching these clips and Jia Jiang’s subsequent rise to fame made me ponder deeply is there something simple (getting people to do X) & short (3 min youtube clips) I could do that could give me my moment of fame? To give my brainstorming a framework (yes, my 2 year MBA is coming handy) I thought the qualities my Project Flaming Fame:

• something people feared or shied away from doing
• easy to create (minimum editing) — I am lazy
• perhaps involve my wife and 9 month son :) The more the merrier

One of my ideas was for our family to dress up as monkeys (my son already has that suite, it is hilarious) and walk like that through downtown Baltimore. My wife vetoed this idea in a second. Where would we get the large costumes anyway?

Another idea was to invite strangers for dinner to our home to get to know new people and just see what kind of people we meet. My wife liked this idea although she would have to do the cooking (she is very kind). So I was browsing around to see if someone is already doing this and someone is. Check this. It looks like a really interesting project. I just read his interview with Ed Koch.

So what should I do? Anyone have suggestions ideas?