Resources to Help You

I often hear requests for the latest ideas and trends in entrepreneurship. So, from time to time, this blog will provide links to resources that can help you with your own business prospects.

*Been There, Done That

*Can You Learn To Be An Entrepreneur??

* Austin or Bust!

* Challenges Facing Entrepreneurs

* 10 Tips for a Strong Start

* 9 Way to Prepare for Growth and Success

We hope the information provided here will be useful to you. Let us know what you think!

Ohio County Entrepreneur Club Meeting On Thursday!

Please join representatives from GRADD and the Ohio County Chamber for an organizational meeting of the Ohio County Entrepreneur Club! The meeting will take place on Thursday, March 11, 12:00 p.m. at the Ohio County Chamber Office (1350 Clay Street, Hartford, KY). If you have any questions please feel free to contact us at (270) 926-4433. See you there!

Social Entrepreneurship Offers New Way Of Doing Business

Various economists, sociologists, politicians, and pundits have often argued that the underlying principles of the free market economy(i.e. the pursuit of profit) and the ideals of charity (i.e. helping others without regard for one's own self-interest)are diametrically opposed to one another. On one pole you have the greedy, self-interested business tycoon, who buys and sells goods and services without regard for the human costs of such transactions. On the other pole you see the selfless idealist, who values collective good over that of the individual. These extreme stereotypes are both misleading and potentially irrelevant in the 21st Century due to the fact that a few creative thinkers have decided to think outside the box. In this post, I would like to highlight two of these social entrepreneurs with the hope that some readers within our small GRADD region in Western Kentucky will see that helping others is not an anathema to turning a profit.

Have you ever heard of Muhammad Yunus? Neither had I, but he is truly an amazing humanitarian and businessman. Yunus was trained as an economist at Vanderbilt University, and witnessed abject poverty in his home country of Bangladesh when that nation experienced a severe famine in 1974. During this time of economic and social hardship in Bangladesh, Yunus made a loan $27.00 U.S. Dollars to a group of 42 families so they could create and sell items without having to undertake stringent loan guidelines offered by traditional financial institutions. From this experience, and through his economics research, Yunus founded Grameen Bank to specialize in providing credit and banking services to the working poor. To most people, this would make zero sense. Hypothetically, the working poor do not have the resources nor the collateral to secure loan funds, so why take on the risk? Sounds crazy, right? Wrong. Today, Grameen Bank maintains 2,563 branches and services approximately 81,343 villages throughout Asia, the Americas, and Africa. Grameen has provided $8.86 billion (USD) in microloans, $7.86 billion (USD) of these monies have been fully repaid, and they have a recovery rate of 96.54%! Yunus was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.

Another great example of an innovative and dynamic social entrepreneur is Blake Mycoskie. Mycoskie is the "Chief Shoe Giver" of TOMS Shoes. The story about how he gained such a strange job title is a heartwarming one. In 2006, Mycoskie was a serial entrepreneur (he had started a laundry company, a billboard service, and drivers education website, all while in his 20s), and a former contestant on the reality show The Amazing Race. Following his stint in adventure-reality TV, he decided to return to Argentina for a vacation. He was expecting delicious red wine, excellent food, and was excited to learn the game of polo. However, Mycoskie noticed two things: 1) that the native-Argentinian shoe known as the alpargata was comfortable, versatile, and not available in the United States; and 2) that the majority of Argentinian children he encountered did not wear nor own a single pair of shoes. In poor nations, citizens do not maintain the luxury of automobiles or even bicycles and must rely on their own two feet as their singular mode of transportation. The lack of shoes within these regions perpetuate disease and infections that are otherwise preventable. Mycoskie's entrepreneurial mind went to work. Why not create a business model where for every pair of shoes you sell you then give a pair away to a child in need? He took $500 and created 250 shoe prototypes, and created TOMS:Shoes for Tommorrow. Previously, Mycoskie had anticipated that he would spend the first half of his life making as much money as possible and the second half giving that money away. By converging the concepts of a for-profit enterprise and acts of charitable giving into one cohesive and sustainable business model, Mycoskie has now distributed (as of April 2009) more than 140,000 pairs of shoes to children in Argentina, Ethiopia, South Africa and the United States. TOMS are sold online and in 500 stores nationwide. Mycoskie also encourages participation in the one-for-one movement by his customers by inviting interested individuals to join him on "Shoe Drops." The work of Blake, the TOMS Shoes Team, and the idea of the one-for-one model have been recognized by the Clinton Global Initiative, the U.S. Secretary of State, and numerous others. Mycoskie rightly states that "Business and matters of the heart do not have to be mutually exclusive. That one does not need to choose between passion and business, or the Peace Corps and corporate America, but a blend can exist, and when the model is sound, great things can happen."

As you can see, the perception of what is "acceptable" in the world of entrepreneurship is evolving and changing. Those who are revered in business--Jobs, Walton, Buffet, Ellison, Koch Winfrey, or Zuckerberg--created opportunities by defying convention. Perhaps social entrepreneurs will usher in the next epoch in global business? Could we be on the verge of an era in which profit and goodwill are not viewed as mutually exclusive? Please feel free to share your thoughts on these figures, their business models, and offer your own ideas about social entrepreneurship and what it means for all of us. We want the new incarnation of this blog to not only be about sharing news, events, and networking, but also to facilitate a discussion about the nature of entrepreneurial ideas and what these ideas means for GRADD, Kentucky, the United States, and the world. And, as always, thanks for reading.

19 Blogs You Should Bookmark Right Now

Entrepreneurs are learning everyday that social networking is crucial to business growth through marketing, customer relations, market expansion, etc. Sites such as Twitter, Facebook, the Blogosphere are not merely temporary fads, but could hold a valuable place in the future of American commerce. The folks at Inc. Magazine recently released a listing of the "19 Blogs You Should Bookmark Right Now." Check out these sites here and let us know what you discover.

A NEW Green River Entrepreneur Club!

At its inception, the Green River Entrepreneur Club was met with enthusiasm and great attendance at monthly meetings. The dynamic and dialogue amongst the regular membership was enriching for the entrepreneurial climate for the seven-county GRADD area. However, attendance dwindled as the meetings continued. When we examined the attendance at each of the meetings, we noticed some trends that illustrated the need for outreach throughout the GRADD Region: 70% of attendees were from Daviess County, 17% from Henderson County, 7% from Ohio County, 3% from Union County, and 3% from Webster County. The pressing question that arises from these statistics is simple: How do we tailor the existing Club to aid and assist entrepreurs in each of the GRADD counties? After careful deliberation, we feel that a new incarnation of the club will allow for expanded membership, a diverse range of events, and, ultimately, provide opportunities for all GRADD citizens to achieve their business goals.

The new structure of the Entrepeneur Club involves a two-tiered approach. Our goal is to establish chapters of the Green River Entrepreneur Club in each of the GRADD counties. We hope that each chapter will include local civic and business leaders, young people who are eager to learn about the business world, aspiring entrepreneurs, Chamber of Commerce members, and the like. Moreover, the club chapters themselves will be autonomous and individual to each county. For example, the preference of one chapter may involve monthly lunch meetings that include a speaker. Other chapters may prefer a more relaxed approach that evolves with each meeting. That is the beauty of this type of organization: each club will embody the individuality of the local community! Once these club chapters are established, the existing Green River Entrepreneur Club (operating out of the GRADD Office) will organize and facilitate larger events that bring each of the chapters together for networking, larger speaking events, learning seminars, etc.

Therefore, GRADD is pleased to announce that--with the invaluable assistance of the Ohio County Chamber of Commerce--we will hold our first organizational meeting of the Ohio County Chapter of the Green River Entrepreneur Club on Thursday, March 11, 12:00 p.m. at the Ohio County Chamber Office (1350 Clay Street, Hartford, KY). This meeting will be a strategy session to define the direction of the Ohio County Chapter. We are in the process of planning the organization of additional chapters in other GRADD counties, and will have news on that front very soon!

We hope to see you on the 11th! Please do not hesitate to contact me at joeberry@gradd.com or at (270) 926-4433 if you have any questions.

I'm looking forward to meeting and working with all of you!

--Joe Berry