Monday, April 19, 2010
Friday, April 16, 2010
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Friday, March 26, 2010
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Friday, March 19, 2010
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Calling All Lions to the Founders Den
Times are tough in this economy and through tough economic times entrepreneurs lead the way out. However, I can say with 100% certainty that I am worried about our future entrepreneurs in this country. As it sits today they are nothing more than prey. Prey for those that pretend to be “guru’s” and “experts” of entrepreneurialism. First of all is that even possible? Being an entrepreneur changes every 5 seconds as is. I am concerned for the people out there that have the intelligence and possess the work ethic to be successful (not necessarily always rich) being taken for a ride by people that have never made 6 figures in one fiscal year. When you look up the word entrepreneur online all you seem to come across are some slick writing MLM salespeople, Public Speakers that “teach you” to be an entrepreneur (most of which cannot afford to buy you lunch) and someone trying to sell you some sort of startup package. If these people were such great entrepreneurs wouldn’t they be on the news with the press be speaking about them and not house Mom’s that just made $300 selling a potion or lotion to their neighbor giving testimonials? If they were truly successful they would have zero time to “teach” entrepreneurs anything. I myself have no time to “teach” anything and I am nowhere near the level of success they claim to be at. I am not interested in someone paying me money to tell them some information, at all. I am always interested in a new, well qualified, ambitious new business partner with “good greed”. “Good Greed” is not Gordon Gecko it is not stabbing people in the back to make a buck. It is a simple saying for normal people that want to be a success in life, but not at the expense of sacrificing their integrity. You see there is too much bad greed out there and that is really killing our economy. This plague will not take up any more of the space on my blog form here out.
This is why we started this incubator program as a free service to keep good minds away from bad business people, to create innovation from the ashes and to help build win-win situations for us and our candidates. We make Lions! Lions feed themselves, they don’t wait for others. Lions hunt as a team and are loyal to each other for the greater good of the pride. We have so many business ideas as a group already, we don’t need you to have one of your own, just the want to create, just the want to captain a ship and become a REAL CEO. Let me explain this saying, REAL CEO. How many times have you seen somebody’s business card that just opened a business with no employees, revenue or product last week and have the title of CEO on their card? This is bullshit and we all know it, so do they. To let you know how much this means to me, I am not even the CEO of my own company, I am the President. There is a huge difference in the two. This is because I know what makes a business work, having the right people in place. Knowing your role is the first step to success. David Turner is the right man for that job, not me. I am a growth man and love to innovate, not run a company. The time of the fake CEO is coming to an end in this coming year of 2010, period. We will make real CEO’s, who run real companies, which make real money, that have real numbers, employees and products. Being a CEO is a big deal if you do it right. It can also be the biggest self fulfilling lie you ever tell yourself. The mirror will let you know where you really stand, if you have the courage to listen to it. The premise of this program is making CEO’s, not entrepreneurs. I am an entrepreneur, to its very finest, and I don’t want to see more of me. I want to see qualified CEO’s that know what I know and can work the hours I work with the skill and precision of a David Turner (a true executive). Our Den will have all kinds of people in it, CFO’s, COO’s, CMO’s, CIO’s, Presidents, Sales Directors and the whole nine yards. This is due to design; we want all to be able to work together along side of us. Our candidates will literally be working for us and watching us run our companies every single day. Learning will occur late night after the day is done.
The word Entrepreneur is so whored out it makes me sick. Please stop being prey, stop listening to guys that advertise how smart and successful they are, it is a fools dream to think you will find your Yoda on a late night infomercial. Stop being preyed on by an industry that doesn’t have your track record, yet alone a better one. They will continue to prey on you as long as you keep paying their fee and stroking their ego. You don’t need to pay money; you need to give your time to someone that has actually been there recently. It does not come overnight; it takes lots of time, energy and pain. I will guarantee you do not get rich overnight, because you will start this program making minimum wage and learning. That is correct; we actually pay our candidates to start. You will first learn to make markets, and then sell the product to those markets. Then you will be given equity in real businesses that have real problems, turn them around and get paid. All the while we will be working with you and the rest of our self made community to create, fund and start your own business. Your incremental learning will be paid for, nicely. Your time will not be wasted, unless you let it be. We are creating our own CEO’s in our image, period. If you have an idea, a business or just a dream it matters not to me. Send me a note on Facebook only if you are ready to become a Lion. If you aren’t ready yet please don’t waste either of our time.
The entrepreneurs that go through our program will have to start their journey by taking an IQ and proprietary personality evaluation to see if they have the basic make up we require for an interview. We aren’t looking for Harvard kids here, unless their name is Will Hunting! We are looking for people that have the capacity to learn and the talent to forgo their ego and work long hours. I can tell you from experience that being a success means one thing, just one thing. YOU MUST BE WILLING AND ABLE TO DO WHAT OTHERS WON’T AND CAN’T. You must be willing to work while everyone else plays and you must have the ability to learn from the fire, not the books. I will say that books count and if I were starting over I would read, Good to Great by Jim Collins and Mastering Business Operations by Joerg Sieber, along with sales book after sales book. We make sure all candidates know that this is the basics of business first, build a great team, create a company, sell as much product as possible and make sure it operates smoothly so customers get what they pay for. It is that simple in the beginning. The first thing entrepreneurs need to learn, in my opinion, is to sell and work as long as their body can handle. I see it all too often, “I believe in balance which is why I don’t work past 6 or on weekends”. This really translates to “I am too lazy to achieve my dreams” in my language. After passing the tests we give out they are then thrown into a group interview and then meet with David Turner, John Montieth, Adam Blejski and I. We will decide who we take in and then find out if they have a current business idea or if they just have passion and need an idea to work on; both way we don’t care and can work with both. We just want other Lions in our Den. We want those people that want to work their guts out to get what they want so they can take care of their families forever. All entitled people need not apply!!!!! In the group that will be running the program, day in and day out, there are 2 IPO’s, 21 companies (non-mlm) started from scratch, millions of dollars a year in provable income, experts in every field from personal finance to social media and a panel of well vetted educators to pick up the slack when we are too busy to be there. The Founders Den is a place for ideas to harvest and become reality. It is a place that doesn’t judge and doesn’t hold back. We want all the folks involved to spawn as many ideas as humanly possible to make this world a better place. The stages, which will be explained publically over the next 3 weeks, are in increments of 45, 180 and 90 days if done right. We will use our own money to fund our candidates’ ideas!!! In the end this will be the largest organization of Business Founders in the world. …………more to come this week.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
5 Things Every Entrepreneur should be prepared to do For the New Year 2010
As we approach the new year of 2010 we sit in one of the most interesting times in human history. As Entrepreneurs we have the opportunity to change the course of the U.S. economy, with a little help for the administration of course. The New Year 2010 will be what you, as an entrepreneur, make it. Going in to this New Year know that there are some things we all need to be aware of. Social Media and its presence in the world of marketing and promotions, regulation changes, tax changes (not for the good with our current administration), the availability of talent in the marketplace and cheaper money are just a few of them. So, in order to be ready for this upcoming New Year we all should be prepared to do the 5 following things:
3. Train like never before- There will be a high precedence set on training in a world like the one we are about to see. If we have $80,000 a year people looking for jobs and taking $50,000 a year jobs this tells us they came from a much larger shop and need the major training to be reminded of big dollar corps of yester year. Be professional even if you are small, it will attract more talent than you can possibly imagine! Training can work like a recruiting tool if done right. Just remember that you time is valuable and find ways to save time in 2010.
2. Save Time, Use Technology- because money will be selling at a premium to you in 2010. The ways to save time are simple and need no explaining what they do. So to make this useful to those that are reading it I will make it simple by explaining how to use this new technology. Use video, ALL THE TIME!!! Record every training session, every board meeting and every client meeting, it allows to be played over again at your leisure. It also allows you to be able to prove things that may take up your time later with proof. Use lots and lots of webcasts and save on flight money. By a good version of some speech to text software and experiment with it to see if it is worth the time saving. Get yourself the newest Neat Works scanner and go to town; you will never have to input info again!!! Use CRM’s and Project managers religiously, they will be the big heroes for you. The more technology you use the more money and time you save.
1. SELL YOUR PRODUCT YOURSELF- There is a very bad trend that exists in the “Entrepreneur World” and it is the trend of being too good to sell. Owner need to be on the phone 2 times more than the best salesman in the firm. You, as a CEO, have the responsibility to make calls all day and find a way to sell somehow. What I have done in the past is hire a full time assistant and let her do a lot of the smaller things I was doing, just so I could sell again. Think as though you weren’t the owner and you saw the owner working harder than you on the day to day and then out selling you in the end of every month, what a cool thing! There is no bullshit in that statement, only truth. If you are running a company and can find an hour a day, make calls and try to sell, you keep the commission and prove yourself to the crew right away. Selling the plan is the most important thing anyone can do all day, make sure you fit your time right. Use Social Media, Text Campaigns, New Software, and an electronic newsletter to save some funds and some costs. Hire a Social Media firm and let them take a listen to what you plan to do, if they can help, let them and start to build in an implementation schedule.
This is not a “get ahead” idea, this is a must for you as an entrepreneur in 2010, The New Year. You can either be brought in now, or forced in later. The New Year of 2010 will be one that makes new legends and keeps some people poor, the choice is yours. Often times we see that most people that do not succeed have the same excuse, I just didn’t have enough time. Start finding that time over the rest of 2009 and by the time the New Year 2010 comes in you will know exactly how to get this done. There will be many more of the posts to read, so please feel free to send me a comment.
San Diego, California
