Timothy Freriks
Help me write Julia, a new novel
Here’s the opening to a possible new novel. It reads like it will be in the chick lit genre, which is not my primary genre. But I really like the main character so far, so I’d like to pursue it. I’m looking for help from readers to build the story lines. I’ll write the book around the story lines I think are going to work. If you’re interested, let’s start a conversation.
JULIA
Julia is not ‘stunningly’ beautiful as most heroines tend to be. Neither is she ‘striking’, unless of course she happens to be striking you. No, Julia is none of that: she’s ‘odd’, not falling into any category or stereotype. With her round white face, pink-purple lipstick, and dead black hair, you might start with ‘punk’. However, the pink polo shirt screws that perception up pretty good although the strangely patterned and colored over-sized scarf flung over it might give you pause. The ragged, torn, and apparently dirty jeans might not bring you back to ‘punk’—more like ‘unkempt’. The cowboy boots? Well, aside from the fact that they match her hair, your brain might start to frazzle in its attempt to make any sense out of this.… Continue reading
The Seven Steps of Customer Investigation
When aspiring en
trepreneurs finally realize they have to spend more time developing the customer than developing the product in the early days, they are often faced with a dilemma: “You mean I have to actually TALK to people?”
Steve Blank and Eric Ries would answer the same way: yes. You can’t build a product around who you think is the customer and what their problem is and how they want to solve it and whether or not your product offers a compelling solution—you are not the customer! Only the customer is the customer. You have assumptions, but you have to define and verify them before finalizing your product, so you have to get out there and do the process of customer investigation.
So, how? I suggest seven steps, which are built around sales process as it applies to qualifying a prospect.
1: Ask for permission – show respect and consideration; ask for permission and help
2: Qualify the prospect – do they fit the customer profile?
3: Problem probe – do they recognize the problem?
4: Solution probe –… Continue reading
Excerpt 1 from Renaissance, a thriller
Renaissance – novel
I’ll be posting excerpts from my novel, Renaissance. Here’s the quick synopsis first.
First: Renaissance is not about the Renaissance; it’s about a man—and a world—that undergoes a renaissance, a rebirth. This book is of a mixed genre but mostly an adventure, a thriller flavored with financial and political seasoning; it is tightly plotted and engagingly intricate, but interwoven with philosophical undertones.
What if you truly had the chance to go back in time to rewrite history and save the world from imminent destruction? What if your mission was to gain enough financial and political power to actually make a difference? But what if the power that gave you the opportunity had a competitor?
EXCERPT ONE
The immense oil tanker was traveling at 16 knots when its bulbous cutter crashed into the sliver of shallow water barely forty feet wide that separated the seawall from the deeper waters of the Bosphorus Straits. It shattered the sandstone barrier like it was hard candy and slammed into the docks directly in the center of downtown Garipce, driving the cutter into the shops on the other side of the street. The superstructure of… Continue reading
Renaissance, a fiction thriller
Renaissance – novel
This is about my newest novel, Renaissance.
Renaissance is not about the Renaissance; it’s about a man—and a world—that undergoes a renaissance, a rebirth. This book is of a mixed genre but mostly an adventure, a thriller flavored with financial and political seasoning; it is tightly plotted and engagingly intricate, but interwoven with philosophical undertones.
Frankly, it’s hard to classify Renaissance in terms of genre. Besides being a business/political adventure/suspense/mystery thriller, there’s a bit of a love story. There’s a touch of highly feasible fantasy and a lot about an intense battle between superior forces. There’s stupidity and innovation and manipulation, but mostly it’s an engaging and complex story about a man’s growth, struggle, his cleverness and…well, here’s the brief synopsis:
What if you truly had the chance to go back in time to rewrite history and save the world from imminent destruction? What if your mission was to gain enough financial and political power to actually make a difference? But what if the power that gave you the opportunity had a competitor?
Robert Curry is a colorful college professor near Washington D.C. with a unique philosophy about the universe—one that happens to be true.… Continue reading
RENAISSANCE – my newest novel
In this political thriller, Robert Curry is unexpectedly put in a position to save the world from imminent nuclear destruction. Given the task of returning to the past and rewriting history, he must first gain enough financial and political power to be able to prevent the series of accidents and manipulations that led to the apocalypse. But he isn’t the only power trying to affect the outcome. In an epic battle, competing energies of cosmic strengths collide in a complex and electrifying weave of plot twists and turns. This wild ride finally explodes in a climax you will not see coming.
Renaissance is fast-paced thriller with unexpected twists and turns, threads that keep weaving themselves into a tapestry of intrigue, power, betrayal, and courage. It’s also a love story that spans three lifetimes: the same lifetimes, three times.
Robert Curry developed a theory about the origin of life: existence is the mind of the intelligent cosmic matter that expanded in the original “Big Bang” to form the current universe. Everything that is, was. Not only is the tangible world a re-configured state of the original Matter, but the intangible world is as well: intangibles such as love, hate, jealousy, and… Continue reading
URGENCY – Foundation of a saleable product
A lot of articles talk about ‘creating’ urgency in order to sell your product. However, I don’t think you can base your product’s salability on hoping marketing and sales manipulations will create a motivated customer. If your target customer does not already have some urgency in finding a solution to the problem he has, it will be hard to pump up urgency to a point where a prospect becomes a customer.
The customer who is prepared to take money out of his pocket and give it to you is a motivated customer; he is motivated to find a solution to a problem he knows he has. Motivation drives sales—an unmotivated prospect will not become a customer. The ease with which you create that actionable level of motivation is a direct function of urgency: more urgency, more motivation.
Urgency is used to judge how easy it will be to sell your product. Really easy is good; it means you don’t have to work too hard to make the sale. I’m not saying it is good to be lazy, I’m saying that you can make more profit with X number of marketing/sales dollars than you can if you have to… Continue reading
First, Get A Product You Can Sell–Part 1
I have been consolidating and prioritizing my messages for early-stage entrepreneurs. I think that success starts with one simple task: coming up with a product that people will buy. I often talk about bringing ambition and commitment to the table, and that is critical as well, but no amount of ambition or commitment is going to overcome the lack of a product that people, people other than yourself, will see VALUE.
You probably have a product or service idea you want to build into a business; otherwise you might not be reading this. Whether you’re starting a physical-product business, a consulting business, or a retail store, the most important question you have to answer is this: will people give you money for it? Remember: without revenue from paying customers, you won’t have a product to build a business around. So, before you invest a lot of time in building a business plan or developing the final product, the challenge is to make sure your product will provide a substantial value to a lot of people, value sufficient to induce them to part with their money in exchange for it.
How do you create sufficient value? Value is a function of… Continue reading
Idea dating. Shiny Objects Syndrome.
Few people succeed by bouncing around from cool idea to cool idea. If you’re an inventor like me, you have a couple “great” ideas a day. Cool ideas have a life span; some live longer than others. A successful business is based on a cool idea to which you dedicate your energies, committing your time and talent to develop and nurture it. It takes extended focus. That is contradictory to the nature of the guy who thinks up a dozen cool ideas a month, each having some degree of limited focus. It’s tough; many inventors love the creation more than the execution.
It’s not unlike the person who dates a lot of people looking for that “special” person. When I was single man, I dated a lot of women and evaluated each relationship carefully. Some lasted a night, some lasted a week, and some might last a month. My evaluation process was quite rigid, basically looking for all the reasons it wouldn’t work out. It was an exhausting process, and I thought it might never end.
It did. I finally met a woman who had me checking all the boxes rather quickly. I even created new boxes, trying… Continue reading
7 Traits of Successful Entrepreneurs
I’ve been, and I’ve known a lot of, successful entrepreneurs. When thinking through why some made it and some didn’t, seven personal characteristics appeared to be consistent with success.
- Invest in Yourself. I’m not talking so much about money, but rather about time and energy and passion and commitment. If you invest in yourself, it means you believe in yourself, your mission, and your ability to plan and achieve your mission goals.
- Always Be Curious. Successful inventors think up cool stuff because they are constantly curious about how things work, why things work, and how they might find a way to do things better. Successful entrepreneurs are always looking for better ways to execute the mission.
- Run with Smart People. Whether you use people strategically—to get things done— or for inspiration—to stimulate your creative juices—it doesn’t advance your mission to surround yourself with unimaginative or non-stimulating people.
- Always Network for New Contacts. Insurance agents don’t get new clients by having lunch with other insurance agents. The same group of people, although they might be comfortable, will probably discuss the same positions and perspectives. You will generally learn something valuable from new people—smart people.
- Learn… Continue reading
Entrepreneur mistakes I made – Part Deux
I invented NOAH, an animated character technology for online applications. It was very effective and successful for online training projects, bridging the gap between instructor-led and pure online coursework. We adapted it to work on our website, a cute little avatar flying around and pointing at things and explaining benefits and action items, popping up graphics in the middle of a speech, and so on. Several (I stress the word “several”) people mentioned how cool it was, so I, being the addicted entrepreneur I am, decided to expand the product line by developing NOAH for websites.
The new product required an easy interface where customers could build their own avatar and design what it said and did on the page. That was expensive programming. And, we couldn’t resist adding every cool feature we thought of. After 8 months and lots of dollars, we launched it.
It was a party that no one came to. We’re waiting. We’re waiting. Nothing. A competitor, SitePal, seemed to be working (we really didn’t know how well it was doing), so we figured we’d just keep marketing it a things will work out. They didn’t. No one (OK, we had two customers)… Continue reading