Archive for the ‘The Entrepreneur School’ Category
Tuesday, January 26, 2010 | Written by Jacob Dearolph
Posted under: Bootstrapping, Business Partners, Creativity and Ideation, Entrepreneurship Quotes, Entrepreneurship Stories, General Thoughts, The Entrepreneur School |
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1 Comment
We are currently at the University of Georgia with Jim and Chris. They are answering questions on entrepreneurship for a group of students. We are filming the Q&A series as it will be apart of The Entrepreneur School.
I’ve listed the questions below along with some highlights from the answers.
1. How was the transition from working for Coke to Entrepreneur?
2. How would you advise a student who is transitioning from Undergrad to either entrepreneurship or a grad degree?
3. If spending a great deal of money on a startup raises risk how do you start a business with little captial? Even as a student?
4. Should I work for an entreprneur or start slow and small on my own?
5. If I am only going to spend 5k-10k where would I spend the money?
6. How do I get the idea in the first place?
7. What are some necessary legal aspects of starting a business?
8. How do you choose a business partner and selection of equity for each?
9. Does bartering work for bootstrapping?
10. How do you determine what is a good deal with web programming?
11. Are there differences between what you are saying here for an independent contractor?
12. How does a web marketer or service business entrepreneur advertise itself?
13. When should you start paying yourself?
14. You’ve both started businesses where you were the originated the idea how did you bring in people who you could trust; instill the idea; etc…?
15. What are you 1 or 2 reasons for success or failure?
Tuesday, January 5, 2010 | Written by Erik Rostad
Posted under: Angels, Banking, Bootstrapping, General Thoughts, The Entrepreneur School, Total Entrepreneurial Activity, Venture Capital |
Tags: babson, Bootstrapping, entrepreneurship in 2010, entrepreneurship predictions |
1 Comment
2010 will be the Year of the Bootstrapper. It will be the year of the Entrepreneur who can figure out how to do the most with the least.
2009 was a bad year for entrepreneurs. Most predictions for 2010 show a slight improvement in conditions and funding, but still, a difficult time to start a business. But we at The Entrepreneur School believe that now is as good a time as any to start your business.
The Wall Street Journal had a great article this morning covering the different funding avenues available for Start-ups:
Angel Investors
Angel funds fell by 30% in the 1st half of 2009. Predictions are that Angel funds will stay flat in 2010. An interesting fact about angel funds is that even though the total dollar amount invested has decreased, the number of start-ups funded has increased. Fewer dollars for more entrepreneurs. The bootstrappers will win.
Venture Capital
Average deal size in the 1st half of 2009 was $5.7 million compared to $7.5 million + average from 2005 – 2008. Venture Capitalists are saving their money for companies in the late stages of development or are giving more funds to companies already in their current portfolios. Bootstrappers will be a step ahead by not having to wait on the dwindling number of venture funds to come through and will also retain more of their company.
SBA Loans
Less than 45,000 SBA loans were approved from Sept ‘08 – Sept ‘09, which is 36% lower than the year before. Right now, SBA loans only make up 1% of start-up lending. This is expected to increase to 5 – 10% in the near future due to the government’s stimulus packages.
The end of the article describes how Babson College, which is one of the elite entrepreneurship universities in the world, estimates that the average entrepreneur needs $65,000 to get their business up and running. In this economy, with savings accounts, nest eggs, and house values in disarray, it will be difficult for most entrepreneurs to come up with $65,000.
We at The Entrepreneur School teach ways to start businesses for much less than $65,000. There are a number of businesses that can be started where Bootstrapping is considered for each aspect of the business. One of Babson’s professors, Dr. Zacharakis states this in another way:
“Instead of capital infusions, there might be a lot more exchanges of services or trading favors.”
Take a look at the first set of entrepreneurship lessons at The Entrepreneur School.
All info and statistics for this blog post were gathered from The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, January 5th, 2010.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009 | Written by Jacob Dearolph
Posted under: The Entrepreneur School |
Tags: google, google placement, google rank, The Entrepreneur School |
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The Entrepreneur School is excited at the fact that our Google ranking is increasing to the point that we are among the top listed sites for the search “Learn How to Start a Business”
In Safari we come up Number 1:
In FireFox we come up as the 3rd listed site:
Google ranking is about hard work. We sat down a year ago and started watching videos and doing research on how to strengthen our google ranking. So far it has paid off. We go through google ranking as a part of our business start-up training. Take a look at The Entrepreneur School to learn more.
Tags: google, google placement, google rank, The Entrepreneur School | Posted under The Entrepreneur School | No Comments
Thursday, November 5, 2009 | Written by Erik Rostad
Posted under: Entrepreneurship Quotes, General Thoughts, The Entrepreneur School |
Tags: Entrepreneurship Quotes, how to be an entrepreneur |
1 Comment
“You can’t want to be an entrepreneur. You have to want to be a solution to a problem.”
- Jim Beach
Tags: Entrepreneurship Quotes, how to be an entrepreneur | Posted under Entrepreneurship Quotes, General Thoughts, The Entrepreneur School | 1 Comment
Friday, October 23, 2009 | Written by Erik Rostad
Posted under: Blog, Bootstrapping, Podcasting, The Entrepreneur School |
Tags: how to start a podcast, Podcasting, podpress, turn blog into podcast |
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The Entrepreneur School Podcast Channel
I was speaking with a friend yesterday who runs an excellent blog. He writes 2-3 times a day and the content is outstanding. It’s so good that I recommended that he try another outlet alongside his blog. I recommended that he begin recording his blog posts in order to send them out as podcasts.
Most people spend hours a week in their car and have more time to listen to content instead of reading content. Are you reaching those people?
These days, podcasting has become almost too easy. All you need is a basic microphone (standard on most laptops now days), recording software (available free on Mac’s (GarageBand), and a way to upload your files online. If you have a Wordpress.org blog, you can download the Podpress Plugin and set yourself up so that after recording yourself reading the blog you just wrote, you can easily post the audio file within your blog in a very sleek looking Flash-based player. And if you set things up correctly with iTunes, Podpress will send your podcast directly to the iTunes podcast section to be searched all over the United States.
The Entrepreneur School loves testing these new ways of communication because we know how important they are to bootstrapping entrepreneurs trying to get the word out in every way possible. We just got our own iTunes channel for this blog. So if you prefer listening to reading, you can click on the following link to go to the new Entrepreneur School iTunes Podcast Channel.
But I need to warn you. If you are the type of blogger whose most recent post was from July and the recent one before that was from February, podcasting is not for you. The idea, (as well as the idea for your blog), is to keep momentum going so that the people who subscribe to feeds from your blog or podcast are satisfied daily. And be sure to provide interesting and relevant content. If you are just making advertisements, good luck getting followers.
Tags: how to start a podcast, Podcasting, podpress, turn blog into podcast | Posted under Blog, Bootstrapping, Podcasting, The Entrepreneur School | No Comments
Saturday, October 10, 2009 | Written by Jacob Dearolph
Posted under: General Thoughts, The Entrepreneur School |
Tags: Marriage, wedding |
No Comments
The Entrepreneur School sends Jim and Megan our congrats today. It was a wonderful wedding. We wish you well!
Tags: Marriage, wedding | Posted under General Thoughts, The Entrepreneur School | No Comments
Thursday, October 8, 2009 | Written by Jim Beach
Posted under: Marketing, The Entrepreneur School |
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Congrats to Erik for getting this blog accepted by Google News. For all you who don’t know what I am talking about, and I didn’t until Erik educated me, Google scans many sources when it shows it results. Especially for the News feature on Google. Google News will scan newspapers and BLOGS to answer your inquiry about a topic. So, if you are searching for “Shark Tank,” Google will scan websites, news reports, and CERTAIN blogs. Not all blogs, but some selected blogs. The Entrepreneur School blog has been selected as one of the blogs Google will scan. Yeah, go team!
Lots of blogs are rejected by Google, so it is a big deal, and here is the important part, it will drive traffic to your blog and site significantly! Entrepreneurs, get your blogs on Google!!
Posted under Marketing, The Entrepreneur School | No Comments
Wednesday, September 16, 2009 | Written by Jacob Dearolph
Posted under: Social Media for Entrepreneurs, The Entrepreneur School |
Tags: making money on twitter, social media, twitter, using twitter for business |
1 Comment
A bit of controversy is occurring here at The Entrepreneur School. Is it a battle of young (See Erik and Jacob’s blogs) verses old (See Jim’s blogs) or a battle of the naive verses the experienced? It remains to be seen and we need you to help. SEE BELOW.
Read the last 3 or 4 blogs at The Entrepreneur School Blog and look below post to the questions.
Is this True of Twitter:
True?
Or This:
$$
Calling readers of our blog, the blogging community, Twitter users, Twitter Preneurs, ect… to help. If you know of others who have been successful or have experience with the questions below then get them to respond.
So please respond with FIRST HAND accounts of your experience with Twitter in the following ways:
In the positive:
- Do you run a successful cash flowing business with Twitter?
- Do you run a online business where Twitter has verifiably helped you win customers?
- Do you run a different kind of business where marketing with Twitter’s has increased sales, brand awareness, market share, etc…?
- Have you had any experience with Twitter that resulted in an increase of the bottom line?
In the Negative:
- Have you tried to start and run a business with Twitter and it failed?
- Have you tried using Twitter for increased customers or revenues and it been a complete waste of time?
- Have you used twitter for any purpose involving marketing and it resulted in nothing?
Please respond and let us know of your experience.
Thanks,
Jacob
Tags: making money on twitter, social media, twitter, using twitter for business | Posted under Social Media for Entrepreneurs, The Entrepreneur School | 1 Comment
Thursday, August 27, 2009 | Written by Jim Beach
Posted under: General Thoughts, The Entrepreneur School |
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Hello everyone,
Sorry for not communicating sooner, but Chris and I have been busy, and lazy! We have been working on The Entrepreneur School quite a bit and have some cool things to tell you about.
First, the slide and videos. Most of the slides are posted. We are still reworking some of them (improving them) based on how we thought the series went. But, we will post of all them. They are available at http://www.theentrepreneurschool.com/learn.html
The videos are slowly being edited. We had planned on just throwing them up there, warts and all, but after looking at the footage, we decided there were too many warts, so they are being edited by a professional, at huge expense to us! About a quarter of them are done, and more get done every week. We will tell you about it when they are done and you will have time to view them.
Also, we added a new feature to each lecture. At the bottom of each page, there are 8-15 articles or reading assignments. These readings reinforce the point we were trying to make, or sometimes, present the other side of the argument.
We have started blogging too. On a variety of topics, almost every day, but always in some way relevant to entrepreneurship. http://blog.theentrepreneurschool.com/ If you want us to blog about you, tell us your story!
We are now twittering too. The group to join is entrprnrSchool. We will send out tweets about new blog entries and other important news. This is the best way to follow up with the series.
Finally, we are ready to start some small group meetings to brainstorm and toss ideas around. We would like to get 6-12 people at each meeting. We are proposing that the first meeting be September 20th, Sunday evening, maybe 6 to 9. First come, first served. Email james.beach@att.net to sign up.
Please forward this letter to as many people as you can! Thanks!
Best
Chris and Jim
Posted under General Thoughts, The Entrepreneur School | No Comments
