Well well well......Those words still resonate through my mind every time I think about my experience at The Blox, an entrepreneurship bootcamp competition filmed in Kansas City and hosted by reality TV star and sexiest red head with abs alive, Weston Bergmann.
To be honest I've dreaded writing this blog post because so much has happened in the 9 months since filming that I have no idea where to start. There have been so many ups, just as many downs, glorious triumphs and absolute devastation. But with so much going on in my mind I've got to get some of it out. So lets start off with what The Blox actually is and go from there.
What's interesting about The Blox, and what makes the experience so rewarding is that yes, it is a competition, but you are doing battle with yourself just as much as your fellow rivals. There's no underhanded cunning, mind games or outright confrontation. It's all about taking in the information provided, plugging it into your business model and being able to communicate your ideas to your peers - With no time to prep, on camera, in front of everyone. 'Intense' would be the word that persevered through the week.
At the beginning of the week, no one knew what to expect. Everyone in the room was smart, creative, and in various stages of chaos known as running a start up. Every stage of business was represented by the 70+ other entrepreneurs in the competition. We had folks making their first million going up against a napkin sketch and a dream, and the results were not what you might expect.
The overarching build of the week was; each day we started off with a classroom session on a particular topic, taught by the man himself Wes Bergmann. With a dramatic influx of information to deal with, we would then break for lunch where we got to stuff our faces, and then immediately dive into the first challenge. We would be given anywhere from 5-15 minutes to apply the information from the morning into a series of questions that we would then have to answer in a pitch for our personal business.
An example of that would be: How do you create a customer acquisition funnel? Am I in a demand creating or demand harvesting mode of business? How do I know? What are 3 things that I can do in the short term to enhance my business? 3 Things long term?
These may come across as simple questions, but when you're under the gun and you have to not only plug these questions into your existing business in a way that makes sense, it has to be more unique and creative than 70 of your peers. You also have to illustrate a higher understanding of it, and you have to verbalize it on camera. And then once you get through all of that, you get 10 minutes of facetime with a judge that has a net worth of at least $10 million who's determined to only send the best in their group to The Blox-Off. What is the Blox-Off you might ask?
It is fear and excitement and praying that your idea is actually a good one. If you make it through the first challenge and the judges nominate you out of your group to represent them in the Blox-Off, you are called out with 6 of the other Judge nominees to go one-on-one with Wes. When it's time, they bring you to the back so you don't know what the challenge is going to be, explain the rules to the audience made up of your fellow bloxers, and then finally, one at a time, you're brought out into the lights and the cameras and the noise to battle for the win.
I'm actually going to leave this blog here, as only Episode 1 of Season 8 one of the Blox has been released and I don't want to spoil anything.
If you want to watch the whole season all the way through I would recommend checking out www.betablox.com. If you want to see more of me, things get interesting around episode 4.
@betablox
To watch season 8 Episode 1 follow the link below or the link on my landing page.
https://www.facebook.com/BetaBlox/videos/345749587959811/?mibextid=zDhOQc