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Posts Tagged ‘startup’

FundingUniverse Fueling Entrepreneurism With Their CrowdPitch Events

Friday, December 18th, 2009

On December 16th Ethos 360 attended FundingUniverse’s CrowdPitch Event located at the NedSpace facility in Portland, Oregon.  CrowdPitch brings entrepreneurs, innovators, mentors, support providers, and investors together in an informal and energetic setting. Five local entrepreneurs had four minutes to pitch their company to both a panel of experts and a live audience, followed immediately by a three minute Question and Answer session with the panel. The panel was made up of investors and other area professionals who have deep roots in the local entrepreneurial community.

The attendees and the panel help the entrepreneurs refine their pitch or business model with real world feedback. Worksheets are provided to those in attendance to rate and critique each company that’s presenting along with “monopoly cash” to make an “investment” in the company or companies they feel are the strongest. After all of the presentations, two winning presenters will be announced based on the amount of “monopoly cash” that is “invested” (one by the panel of expert investors and the other by the audience).

Did I mention these events are FREE to attend and present at?

FundingUniverse (www.fundinguniverse.com) is a top-notch organization that connects entrepreneurs and investors along with providing entrepreneurs the tools and resources to become fundable.  They are leading the way with their very well organized effort to entrench their CrowdPitch events in major national markets and to help fuel entrepreneurial growth at a grassroots level. They are giving back in a BIG way.

Kudos to Alex Lawrence, partner at FundingUniverse, who we had the good fortune and pleasure to meet.  Alex brought an amazing level of energy, passion and levity to what can often times be a very stressful moment in an entrepreneur’s development.  Below is an excellent news story about CrowdPitch along with an interview with Alex.

In addition, Ethos 360 wants to thank the following sponsors involved with making FundingUniverse’s Portland CrowdPitch Event a resounding success.

Stoel Rives- www.stoel.com
NOWAdvisors- www.nowadvisors.com
SEO.com- www.seo.com
NewsWire- www.newswire.net
Jive- www.getjive.com
NedSpace- www.nedspace.com

Awesome New Baby Book iPhone Application From Emmbook

Saturday, December 12th, 2009

Parents love sharing every detail of their baby’s growth and development. Picking up your fancy new 3g internet enabled cell phone allows anyone to quickly snap a picture or shoot a short video of their baby mugging for the camera or doing something super-cute. Within seconds this special moment is disseminated to friends and family across a plethora of media platforms utilizing a variety of delivery services, such as, email, SMS or post the picture or video to their Facebook page or YouTube. It has never been easier to create your own videos, manage photos and share information with friends and family. Technology and Steve Jobs has made it happen, but it’s also become more time consuming and confusing than ever.

In my family anyone under the age of 10 already has a full command of how to quickly work and leverage all of the technological advances to their advantage. What about the grandparents or the parents who didn’t grow up with social networking or upgrading to the coolest cell phone every six months? My 10 year old nephew can easily embarrass me with his knowledge of how all of these different entertainment and communication apparatuses interact along with how to effectively leverage them.

Now there’s a user friendly wonderfully simple solution called Emmbook. Emmbook is a new iPhone and iPod app that will let you capture every single memory related to your baby and save it for posterity. In a certain sense, it is not that inaccurate to call it a mobile baby book.

Using such an app you will be able to set down just everything, from the time your little one was first introduced to relatives to his first steps. The way this is done is very intuitive, as each and every picture of you baby that you take is added to the Photo Book and you can then tap the screen to display the different images that you have added so far.

In addition to that, the app comes with some features such as a diary of feeding and sleeping and a tracker of “thank you” notes for the gifts your baby has received. That is interesting for sure, and it raises the VFM appeal of the whole package considerably.

When all is said and done, this is quite a fitting way to save your baby’s best moments without going overboard. Emmbook can be downloaded from the App Store at a price which is specified on the site. Watch the introductory video below to learn more or visit www.Emmbook.com to check it out.

This start-up is HOT and gaining traction.

Entrepreneurs- Modern Day Visionaries

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

If we take the look to carefully at businesses nowadays, we will inevitably realize a clear global tendency: entrepreneurs are taking over the industry. And they are doing it fast!

And there is a perfectly good reason for that, which is easily explained by the revolutionary characteristics of successful entrepreneurs.

They are what I like to call business visionaries instead of the common and partly misleading tag of business owners associated with them.

Industry visionaries, as their name implies, differ from the broad conception of business owners in that they have a clear vision, an exact picture of how a business or online opportunity is going to behave at any given time and under most circumstances. And that is due to the fact that they are willing to learn and take action as they go and also because most of them work on a business that is not in their field of knowledge or expertise. Entrepreneurs are constantly stepping out of their comfort zone and innovating different business models every day.

In the current modern day commercial industry, visionaries excel in taking an ordinary business and making it perform in an extraordinary way. How? Well, take a look at the following points:

1. Entrepreneurs do more with less. They use leverage to achieve success.

2. They have long and short term goals. They live by those objectives and finally create a genuine mission statement.

3. Visionaries aim at developing systems that will work on autopilot. Automation is vital to any modern day business.

4. They are not afraid of looking beyond risks and seeing the big picture. They will compensate for lack of experience on certain fields with innovation and creativity, leveraging existing business opportunities or programs.

Even though most Internet marketers will consider themselves entrepreneurs, in essence, many work against the very same principles that define visionaries. Just like with everything else in life, there are things that will get people closer to becoming real entrepreneurs and things that will not.

- You should always work towards doubt avoidance.

Take action and make decisions. Be a leader! What worked for somebody might not work for you, but you will never know until you try it.

- Incite curiosity and learn as you go.

If you are in affiliate marketing, then innovate! You are part of an existing system with hundreds of people in it. Make unique videos with interesting animations, offer free gifts of real value and finally make your offers more attractive than what your clients or prospects expect.

- Work positively for a bigger and better industry instead of fighting over a small market.

We finally want to become business visionaries and not only self proclaimed business gurus. Share knowledge and show the advantages of your business instead of pointing out bad things regarding other programs. Help your colleagues without hesitation and you will achieve success online.

Even after stating all of the above, modern day Internet marketers will still embrace misleading concepts regarding their own business, mainly because of fear of taking risks and standing out from the rest. That is very unfortunate since true entrepreneurs are unique in their niche and should ultimately possess an educated global judgment. Visionaries can tell the difference between improving a not so effective marketing method, from pointless persistence. As you have probably noticed, in modern day businesses, we should avoid destructive waste of time and effort, and focus entirely on succeeding with techniques that are of second nature to us to finally generate and, most importantly, KEEP as much profit as possible.

These are some examples of steps that entrepreneurs should take as soon as they get their business going:

1. Billionaire bloggers – visit these blogs to get a glimpse of their mindset, and get inspired. Visit billionaire Mark Cuban’s blog here  www.blogmaverick.com.

2. Selected www.Twitter.com streams – follow a few, high standard and knowledgeable visionaries and follow their blueprint.

3. Read, write and make videos – doing this correctly, will never compromise the quality of your service or deteriorate your business image in any way.

4. Ask questions and get mentoring – ask your mentor or business tutor as many questions as you want and do not be afraid of doing so. Get everything off your chest and start without doubt; otherwise you will literally choke later on.

These are a few steps that will provide a correct learning curve to becoming real business visionaries. There are many more, but these will definitely start you off in the right direction.

Entrepreneurs should know that wanting something to happen is not enough, it will not magically come to life without the proper hard work and dedication. To become part of the exclusive visionaries group, marketers have to develop their skills consistently every day. Statistics say that people who do this show a much higher rate of success (80-90%) than the average business owners we see every day.

So, true entrepreneurs and visionaries aspire to great things, they transform themselves and are always willing to learn and are never afraid of taking the necessary steps towards innovation. Again, read, get informed, make videos, use the amazing power offered by web 2.0 and only then take real action. But do it today! The world is in need of more and more visionaries every single day and it is entirely up to us to either embrace the idea or simply look the other way. If I can do it, so can you.

To your success.

The Importance Of A Business Mentor For An Entrepreneur

Sunday, July 5th, 2009

When you first start your business everything can be quite confusing. Having an experienced mentor guide you can make the difference between a successful venture and a failed endeavor. There are many pitfalls and problems that are difficult to work out on your own.

At first you’ll have many questions, such as, choosing the right business for you. How to get started? How to get the edge on your competitors? How to really make money and escape that 9-5 job? These are just a few of the confusing questions that face the beginner. If you try to begin without help, you are setting yourself up for failure. Very few can succeed in business without someone to help you and steer you in the right direction along with providing proper motivation. You are indeed like a ship without a captain when you try to start a business alone.

Here are a few common mistakes made by first time entrepreneurs when they first start a business.

1. Starting a business without knowing who you should be marketing to and how to do it effectively. Without knowing how to target your market you can spend hours of wasted time and a lot of wasted dollars.

2. Getting into the wrong business, with too much competition and not enough demand. If you do not get into a specialized market with high demand and less supply you are setting yourself up for failure and you will never make a decent living. Investigate your industry segment very carefully.

3. Believing that a free program will make you money, these are some of the biggest scams on the Internet. There is nothing “free” in this world. Hard work is going to be required to make your business successful.

4. Joining one business opportunity failing after a month and then joining another and another. This is how many beginners loose tons of money and valuable time. Create your own business opportunity and corner your own market.

5. Thinking that money can be made in a short time with no work, this is another pitfall too many first time entrepreneurs fall into when trying to start a business.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have some personal guidance, somebody who can work with you one on one? Show you how to start right and save you all that time and money. Somebody who can help you “cut a pathway through the trees.” This is where a mentor will help you.

There are very few true mentoring courses or programs, where you can really get one on one help. Usually, most people purchase an online course or e-book and then have to work out the rest. However a good one on one mentoring program is different. When you decide to purchase a membership in a mentorship program you will get one on one help for your questions and any problems you may have. As you progress through the program your mentor will coach you on any problems you may have and show you how to overcome them. One of the main reasons for new small businesses failing is lack of guidance and knowledge. There is just too much to know and do without someone to help you.

You can see how a mentoring program works and the obvious advantages, compared to trying to work out everything yourself. I speak from experience. When I first started my business, I had no idea what to do and where to go, until I finally stumbled upon a mentor program that was right for me. After that there was no looking back, I cannot say that I did not make mistakes or come up with problems, but they were nothing that my mentor could not guide me through.

A one on one mentor program is your gateway to success. Unlock the business potential within you, and see how you can achieve what you never thought possible, with the help of individual business coaching. For more information about mentoring programs visit www.Ethos360.com. Experience the satisfaction of starting and building a truly successful business with help and guidance from a mentor.

How to Start an Online Business for the At Home Entrepreneur

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009
Any entrepreneur who’s surfed the internet for 5 minutes has seen the ads. “Make Money on the Internet Working 30 Minutes a day?” “Want to Earn 6 Figures in 6 Months?” “Start Your Online Business and The Only Work you’ll ever have to do Again is Cashing Checks”. Some of them are laughable yet naive entrepreneurs fall for them all the time. There wouldn’t be hundreds of these ads on the internet if they didn’t work. And I mean, make money for the person selling you the e-book, website, home business start-up kit or Multi-Level Marketing Scheme not for you.

Let’s Get Real.

Some people believe it easy to start an online home business, but without having a handle on what is needed to make money online, they will fail like the rest of the 99% that try building a home business on the internet. There are things you must know and ‘tricks of the trade’ that will make the difference between success and failure. This is what we’re going to discuss; how YOU can follow a step by step process to build your own small business and be one of the 1% that are successful.

The Best Part is you don’t Need a Ton of Money to Start the Business.

You don’t need an investor or venture capitalist and you probably don’t even need a loan. You can do it full time or start part time and gradually move to full time as you replace your current income. How much money you make is based upon a little luck, a lot of determination and your desire to succeed. If you didn’t have the desire you probably wouldn’t be reading this right now. The fact that only around 1% of those that start an online business succeeds should be indication enough that there is more to it than just the will. There is also the attitude, information and knowledge. Let’s have a look at each of these. Attitude is Important.Your online home business is a business, not a hobby, and it should be treated as such. You have to discipline yourself to work towards a set plan and achieve your goals: set monthly, weekly and daily targets, and if you take time off for a lunch with a friend, or to watch an episode of Lost, then work later until you have met your targets. Set reasonable expectations. Don’t aim to high or you’ll burn out before you ever really get going. Remember, this is a marathon not a sprint. Targets should be set so that you achieve so much in a certain time, and when you meet them all, your business is that much stronger and on course for success. Newcomers to internet business will most likely need some help with that to start with, but you should quickly get into the swing and be able to formulate your own online business plan and set targets to achieve it. Don’t look upon your income as spare cash: look on it as your income, even if you still have a regular job. Most that are still learning about what is needed to make money online have a day job, although quite a few are unemployed. That’s why they are trying to use the internet to make a living especially now with the current economic climate. Think positive. Fortunes are built during the bad times and cashed in during the good times.Knowledge Is Only As Good as the Source it’s From.

There is a lot of information online, but information is no good on its own with knowing what information is useful and what is not. You must also know how to use the information provided to you. Simply being told that keyword research is essential for the success of your website will not help you to carry out that research properly, and arrive at the right keywords for which each page on your site should be optimized. You have to be told how to carry it out and how to apply it to your online home business. Not only that, but too much information can be just as bad as insufficient. You can suffer what is referred to as ‘information overload’. You have all the information you need to be successful, but there is so much of it, and how do you put it all together to formulate a coherent business plan? Check the resource where the information came from. Seek out experts. Find their blocks and subscribe to the RSS feeds. Listen to people who’ve been successful doing what you are doing. You’ll find they all share common characteristics. Don’t forget to research, research, research.Knowledge Comes From Information.

There are a lot of intelligent people that start an online home business, but fail because they have no idea of what is needed to make money online. There is a lot to learn, and most of the currently successful internet marketers have spent a great period of time devoted to learning their craft. Many had to learn and improvise as they went, because internet marketing was new when they started, and they set the standards and level of knowledge of their day. Now, however, there is a lot of information available online but you have to know what you are looking for before you know what to search for! How do you get a website started up? There are several steps, including:

· Decide how you are going to make money: by selling a product, providing a service or some other way.
· What form will that product or service take? Do you have to create it yourself or sell, on commission?
· How do you choose a domain name?
· You have found out that you should carry out keyword research but how do you do that properly?
· How do you buy and register a domain name, and then use it on your website?
· How do you start up a website?
· How should your website be designed?
· How do you go about designing and constructing it?
· How do you advertise your website? How do you get your site listed on Google and other search engines?
Take Your Time. Step by Step.

We have barely scratched the surface with the above basics. Without that knowledge, however, you don’t have any hope of succeeding with an online home business, and you will be like the 99% others that fail to make money online. The best way for most people to learn, and the way that most appear to prefer, is just like being at school. You are not given the entire alphabet to learn at once: you learn a letter at a time. The same with learning how to start an online home business and make money online:

1. How to choose a money-making or internet marketing technique.
2. Find out how to formulate a plan, and set regular targets.
3. How to choose the right product.
4. How to get a website started up.
5. How to get your products on the site, and how to set your site up to collect payments and deliver the product.
6. How to promote your product and website.
7. How to set everything on autopilot and get onto your next project.
That is just one of a good sequence of events, whereby you are provided the information in easily digestible pieces that come together to provide you with a viable online home business that will not only help you to make money online, but also work as the basis for a massive internet empire that could one day see you earning 7 figures online.

All of the above can be achieved by taking the time to learn at your own pace, lay the foundation, stay motivated, achieve your goals step by step and launch your start-up small business. It is recommended, and money well spent, to hire a mentor or business coach to assist you with your new endeavor. Visit www.Ethos360.com to review their services. Not only can hiring an experienced mentor save you time and headaches but also money as well by keeping you from making the mistakes and falling into the failure traps of the other 99%.

Happy hunting and go make some money!