When your office is your car, you know people like James Holloway can do just about anything. "I'm a busy man," the Greenville father says. "I refer to myself as a professional multi-tasker." As a self-employed businessman, Holloway says no task is too big. But one recent project put him to the test. "It's called the Great American Success Experiment," he says. The idea was born at Showcase Marketing in Greenville. Organizers Geoff Wasserman and Jordana Megonigal wondered what would happen if they gave people 30 days, a little cash, and a dream. "We said let's just give it a shot and see what happens," Wasserman says.
First, they looked for people who were up to the task. "We were looking for 10 business people, 10 stay at home moms, and 10 students," says Wasserman. Every person was challenged to build a business in a month, with just three rules. First, it has to be legal. Second, participants must journal their whole experience. And lastly, they have to return something at the end. There is one more catch: the budding business owners had no idea how much seed money they were going to get. Some received $300. Some got as little as $25. Megonigal says, "We took the investor's money and divided it up, just different amounts and told them they needed to come in and pick an envelope."
For Holloway, the payout was pennies. "I just got $25," he says. He's taken the cash and run with it, creating a business called Upstate Virtual Butler. It's an idea he's been sitting on for several years. "What I came up with was a way for people to save time, money and gas by having all their household products delivered straight to your door." Everything from dog food to deodorant, trash bags to toothpaste, Holloways says he'll contract with vendors to get the products to you. Organizers think his idea is one of many that will take off. "Even if only half of them make something out of the success experiment, there are 9 businesses in existence today that weren't 30 days ago, and that's huge for this economy," says Megonigal.
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