Free Money

Giving Away Money

This exercise will take us a little bit off the beaten path and give you practice at two things:

1) Delivering value to a customer.
2) Conveying a compelling vision.

Specifically, where what you will do. Take five $1 bills. Go to a public place. Try to give them away.

In your post, you should first describe your strategy for this exercise:

• Where will you go?
• What kind of people will you approach?
• What will you say to get the conversation started?
• What is your plan for the conversation?
• Out of five attempts, how many dollar bills do you think you will be able to give away?

Second, be sure to record these encounters. It might help to bring along a friend, but your blog post needs to feature at least 2 recordings of your interactions with people. In the blog post, provide the video recordings and describe your results overall. What are your reflections on this exercise? Was giving away a dollar easier or harder than you imagined? Were your predictions correct or incorrect? If they were incorrect, why? What assumptions did you make about the people you planned to talk to, which were wrong?

Two ground rules:

1) Approach people who are either walking somewhere or talking on their phones. This will simulate what it's like to interrupt customers in the real world with a product or service pitch.

2) You are not permitted to tell the people you encounter that this exercise is for a class. You MUST come up with a genuine reason of why you would want to give away a dollar. 

Be sure to include the phrase "Free Money" in the blog post and label it "Week 7." Once you've published this post, be sure to share the URL here and complete the declaration.

Text for declaration:

PLEASE READ CAREFULLY:

I have published a post about my efforts to give away five $1 bills.

In the post, I described the strategy I used.

In the post, I included at least two video recordings of the interactions. 

In the post, I included my reflection after the exercise. 

I included the phrase "Free Money" in the title and labeled it "Week 7." 

I proofread my post before publishing it.