On Memorial Day in 1948, Bill Rosenberg opened his first coffee and doughnut shop on the outskirts of Boston. He called it the "Open Kettle."

Rosenberg was an entrepreneur at heart. A few years earlier, he started a catering company with his own customized vehicles that delivered meals and snacks to factory workers in the Boston-area.

While Rosenberg fulfilled a need for the workers and solved plenty of their problems by having his early iteration of the "food truck" around the job sites, he soon realized that about 40% of his revenue came just from selling coffee and doughnuts. Sandwiches and breaktime snacks were nice, but low margin stuff.

So, he started Open Kettle as a standalone shop to do just that. Sell coffee. Sell doughnuts. That's it.

At the time, most traditional coffee & doughnut shops offered just 5 types of doughnuts. Rosenberg offered 52 varieties.

He opened his sixth shop in 1955 and then decided to start franchising the idea. Plenty of other folks had caught on to the value of the franchise model and by 1960, thanks to his influence, the International Franchise Association was born.

In the early 1960s, Rosenberg founded a fast food chain. Primarily a burger joint, but he also offered fries, fish sandwiches, clam chowder and other New England staples. He built that up to 27 locations before it came to an end in the late 1970s.

In the 1970s, after a cancer scare, Rosenberg bought a farm (literally) and became one of the leading breeders of Standardbred horses in New England.

Rosenberg died in 2002 at age 86.

Maybe you haven't heard of Rosenberg before or Open Kettle, but soon after he started that first coffee shop, he changed the name.

And certainly, you have heard of Dunkin' Donuts.

How did he do it?

Rosenberg said, "I focused on making that first store a success, then I moved on to the second store, the third and the fourth. You start and learn and build and keep changing your goals as you achieve them."

Well, I took ol' Rosenberg's advice. Make that first thing a success, then move on. That being said, I published a magazine that came out Sunday night.

That's right. I added magazine publisher to my stack of titles. (…and editor and columnist.)

From idea to launch was about 12 days, though I had most of the work done in about 5. Details, details to get it finally out to the public.

It's not perfect, but it was part of a challenge I put forth in my Inner Sphere program. One of the members said this about what we're doing over there:

“Coach O’Leary requires you to take action and do things before you’re fully ready. This gets you out of your comfort zone and opens up possibilities for success. Otherwise, you can just sit waiting and telling yourself one day you’ll be ready. O’Leary will not allow that. You’ll be doing things that put you in the right direction.”

I put my money where my mouth was. I'd been thinking about some type of magazine idea for close to 10 years. I made some progress, but not enough. It would have never got off the ground at all until I buckled down last week and knocked it out.

Just figure it out. There are problems, but not big enough to hold back something that needs to be out there in the culture.

Ours is a print magazine, but we're getting it to the printer in a couple weeks.

We'll have more information on subscriptions in the coming days, but for a limited time, get the digital copy, heavily discounted — all the way down to $6, which is less than you'd spend for snack-time at most Dunkin' Donuts locations.

Click here for more details:

As always,

Brian