God, Country, Commerce.

This is why we are starting the Small Business Chamber of Commerce, Inc to cooperate with local communities to help them do what 5280 Magazine says I've done here in Denver over the last 20 years, "John Wren... has infused Denver with an entrepreneurial spirit." I work to preserve the opportuity my father had to start a business for my grandkids.

More about this on Startup Show, today (Fri, 4-12) at 10 a.m. Denver time, noon Eastern, "Visit Group" on our Facebook Page www.Facebook.com/Small.Business.Chamber and join us right now to be able to see it, it's free and fast! John Wren.

SBCC Startup Method-- Practices of: Recover, Imagine, Think, Learn; to Start, Grow, Flourish. OODA Loop. BE A STARTUP AMBASSADOR FOR YOUR LOCAL CHAMBER.

10 a.m. Startup Show: 2nd Friday On Selling.

Starting today the topic here on the Startup Show will be personal selling. If you'd like to be a guest on the show to share your experience with personal selling or any other aspect of startup, please call John Wren at (303)861-1447. Here's today's show:




Startup Show is on YouTube Live Events, Google+ Hangouts On Air, and on www.JohnWren.com each Friday at noon Mountain Daylight Time, or by recording on www.JohnWren.com. If you would like to suggest a topic for the show, call John Wren (303)861-1447.

Sponsored by Small Business Chamber of Commerce, Inc. which John Wren founded. Membership is free, there are several types of free meetings. Our purpose is to cooperate with local chambers and others to help them give more good help to people who are starting in a new direction with their work. To see some of the meetings see http://Meetup.com/Small-Biz-Chamber and check out the Facebook/Small.Business.Chamber or Twitter @IDEACafe Sm

For more about grassroots politics and the Colorado Caucus see the SBCC project Save the Caucus, http://www.COCaucus.org

Startup Show: Hyper-local hold-up-your-hand marketing.

Live streams here at noon MDT today, Friday, June 10 or watch recording of the show anytime after that by recording. Today I'll talk about groups, neighborhoods, and how you can do well by doing good whether you are in a dorm or apartment, a duplex or single family residence.





To be on the show next week call me at (303)861-1447 Monday or Tuesday, and join us this afternoon here in Denver to continue the discussion at Panera LoDo, 16th & Market, more info at http://Meetup.com/Small-Biz-Chamber along with info about our other low cost/no-cost meetings you might find helpful.

Small Business Chamber of Commerce Startup Method: the practices of Recover, Imagine, Think, Learn, to Start, Grow and Flourish. For help see www.SmallBizChamber.org or call (303)861-1447

Live at 10 a.m. Mountain, The Startup Show

Each week at 10 a.m. Mountain time or here via recording later John Wren talks about startup, going in a new direction with your career, a project or campaign, or a new business. To be on the show call (303)861-1447, if you get the voice mail leave a complete, confidential message and John will get back with you ASAP.

Starting in a new direction? Free startup workshops.

To: Anyone interested in startup. (Start of a new career, project or campaign, or new business.)

The name of the Friday meeting has been changed to Denver Capitol Hill IDEA Café.

I'll be using the IDEA Café tomorrow and next Friday to help me make decisions about further changes in my work, it would be great to have you with us.

Please take a minute to RSVP yes or no for tomorrow, ok? Click below:

Denver Capitol Hill IDEA Startup Café
Panera Bread, 13th & Grant St.
2 to 3:30 p.m. Free.
RSVP

Questions? Want to start a similar workshop in cooperation with your local chamber or other group? Call me at (303)861-1447, we could meet before or after the meeting tomorrow or next Friday.

PLEASE SHARE WITH ANYONE YOU KNOW WHO MIGHT BE INTERESTED. THANKS!

New leader of University of Denver

After big, big successes as President of Colgate and Swathmore, Dr. Rebecca Chopp, inspired by Robert Putnam author of Bowling Alone, the book that's triggered my work for the last two decades, comes to the University of Denver. Here's why:

I just verified with Susan that Nigel Clayton (in picture to the left) will be with us this afternoon at the Small Business Chamber's Denver IDEA Cafe (click here for more info and optional RSVP.)  The meeting is free and open to everyone who is starting in a new direction with their career, starting a new project or campaign, or starting a new business. It's a learning group, not a networking group. This should be a great meeting, join us if you're starting something new, and please let any of your friends who might like a boost at the end of a hard week know about it.


Facebook is changing the way they do Groups, so this may be the last time you'll be getting a Facebook Denver IDEA Cafe reminder.

Because of the Facebook Group change in policy, I'm (that's me, John Wren, in the picture to the right), I'm now going to start posting a message to you here each Monday that will include information about the Small Business Chamber and our Denver IDEA Cafe, our South Metro IDEA Cafe, our Boulder IDEA Cafe, and any other SBCC activities that might be of interest to you.

I'll be posting here each Monday morning, so just check back. If you'd like an email reminder about the post, just enter your email address in the "subscribe" form to the left.

Finally, Robert Schwab, Scott Rodgers, and myself are looking for a few beta testers for our new PioneerHQ.com Colorado Business Almanac and Small Business Directory.  Take advantage of the current free listing offer, and we'll get more information about how we can help you in other ways to connect with good prospects for your business.

The mission of the Small Business Chamber and all that I'm doing now is to help local chambers of commerce be even more useful to people who want to start new businesses, and to strengthen the voice of their small business members. If you'd like to help, give me your email address here, and then "Like" our Facebook Page at http://Facebook.com/Small.Business.Chamber

This life is short, let's get started!
 

Do you want to start your own business? Today's gosple tells us how. Here is what Jesus suggests (if you are serving God and not money):

Lk 16:1-13 or 16:10-13

Jesus said to his disciples,
“A rich man had a steward
who was reported to him for squandering his property.
He summoned him and said,
‘What is this I hear about you?
Prepare a full account of your stewardship,
because you can no longer be my steward.’
The steward said to himself, ‘What shall I do,
now that my master is taking the position of steward away from me?
I am not strong enough to dig and I am ashamed to beg.
I know what I shall do so that,
when I am removed from the stewardship,
they may welcome me into their homes.’
He called in his master’s debtors one by one.
To the first he said,
‘How much do you owe my master?’
He replied, ‘One hundred measures of olive oil.’
He said to him, ‘Here is your promissory note.
Sit down and quickly write one for fifty.’
Then to another the steward said, ‘And you, how much do you owe?’
He replied, ‘One hundred kors of wheat.’
The steward said to him, ‘Here is your promissory note;
write one for eighty.’
And the master commended that dishonest steward for acting prudently.
“For the children of this world
are more prudent in dealing with their own generation
than are the children of light.
I tell you, make friends for yourselves with dishonest wealth,
so that when it fails, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.
The person who is trustworthy in very small matters
is also trustworthy in great ones;
and the person who is dishonest in very small matters
is also dishonest in great ones.
If, therefore, you are not trustworthy with dishonest wealth,
who will trust you with true wealth?
If you are not trustworthy with what belongs to another,
who will give you what is yours?
No servant can serve two masters.
He will either hate one and love the other,
or be devoted to one and despise the other.
You cannot serve both God and mammon.”

Eugene Peterson in his translation calls this "creative survival", focusing on the bare essentials. A lesson I very much need to learn if I’m going to be able to continue with the IDEA Café and Franklin Circles.

Alan Greenspan was on the Charlie Rose show last week. I keep thinking about the term he used, "market capitalism" as opposed to "crony capitalism." Would a term for what Jesus is telling us here be "Christian capitalism" or "creative capitalism"?

From Forbes.com:

The recent 2006 Wharton Entrepreneurship Conference, organized by the school's Entrepreneurship Club, the issue of what makes a successful entrepreneur, inviting a group of entrepreneurs to discuss their backgrounds and business philosophies and offer advice to those interested in taking the plunge.

Raffi Amit, academic director of Wharton's Goergen Entrepreneurial Management Programs, set the tone for the discussion by noting that academic research has debunked much of the conventional wisdom about entrepreneurs.

"There's a myth that entrepreneurs have special traits that distinguish them from other people," he said. "But research shows no unique characteristics. There's a myth that entrepreneurs are risk takers. But research has shown that they try to manage risk. They outsource it where they can. And there's a myth that entrepreneurs have some sort of secret method that they can apply to venture after venture. But many second-time entrepreneurs fail."

OTHER TIPS FROM ENTREPRENEUR-SPEAKERS AT THE CONFERENCE:

***When you graduate is as good a time as you'll see to start a business. The negative is you're broke. But the positive is you're broke, so you've got nothing to lose.

***"The more wealth and prestige you accumulate, the more risk averse you become.

***"There's too much emphasis today on venture capital as a funding source. Historically, most businesses are funded using friends and family, credit cards, Small Business Administration loans and second mortgages. Very few companies are venture backed. One entrepreneur shared he started his business with $25,000 in credit card debt.

***Venture capital makes sense for very few companies. When you're in something that requires a lot of money to start or where time-to-market is critical, then maybe it makes sense.

***Did anyone ever notice how rich VCs are? That money comes at your expense if you're an entrepreneur who is financed by VCs.

*** Before turning to venture capital try to tap personal savings, debt, angel investments, government loans and grants and even financing from potential vendors and customers. One entrepreneur increased her student loans to start her business.

***Another pitfall for aspiring entrepreneurs is spending too much time thinking about all the gee-whiz features they might add to their products. Instead, they should bang out prototypes and put them in consumers' hands as quickly as possible. Remember the KISS rule: 'Keep It Simple, Stupid. Give your product to your mom. Can she use it without any problems? Then you're ready to go.

***"Fail early and learn. Once a company starts attracting customers, many of the other obstacles facing new ventures, like finding investors, will begin to work themselves out.

Learning to Keep Learning
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
New York Times 12/13/06
(This is why the IDEA Cafe http://ideacafe.meetup.com and Franklin Circles
www.JohnWren.com are important. John Wren)

I recently attended an Asia Society education seminar in Beijing, during which we heard Chinese educators talk about their “new national strategy.” It’s to make China an “innovation country” — with enough indigenous output to advance China “into the rank of innovation-oriented countries by 2020,” as Shang Yong, China’s vice minister of science and technology, put it.

I listened to this with mixed emotions. Part of me said: “Gosh, wouldn’t it be nice to have a government that was so focused on innovation — instead of one that is basically anti-science.” My other emotion was skepticism. Oh, you know the line: Great Britain dominated the 19th century, America dominated the 20th and now China is going to dominate the 21st. It’s game over.

Sorry, but I am not ready to cede the 21st century to China yet.

No question, China has been able to command an impressive effort to end illiteracy, greatly increasing its number of high school grads and new universities. But I still believe it is very hard to produce a culture of innovation in a country that censors Google — which for me is a proxy for curtailing people’s ability to imagine and try anything they want. You can command K-12 education. But you can’t command innovation. Rigor and competence, without freedom, will take China only so far. China will have to find a way to loosen up, without losing control, if it wants to be a truly innovative nation.

But while China can’t thrive without changing a lot more, neither can we. Ask yourself this: If the Iraq war had not dominated our politics, what would our last election have been about? It would have been about this question: Why should any employer anywhere in the world pay Americans to do highly skilled work — if other people, just as well educated, are available in less developed countries for half our wages?

If we can’t answer this question, in an age when more and more routine work can be digitized, automated or offshored, including white-collar work, “it is hard to see how, over time, we are going to be able to maintain our standard of living,” says Marc Tucker, who heads the National Center on Education and the Economy.

There is only one right answer to that question: In a globally integrated economy, our workers will get paid a premium only if they or their firms offer a uniquely innovative product or service, which demands a skilled and creative labor force to conceive, design, market and manufacture — and a labor force that is constantly able to keep learning. We can’t go on lagging other major economies in every math/science/reading test and every ranking of Internet penetration and think that we’re going to field a work force able to command premium wages. Freedom, without rigor and competence, will take us only so far.

Tomorrow, Mr. Tucker’s organization is coming out with a report titled “Tough Choices or Tough Times,” which proposes a radical overhaul of the U.S. education system, with one goal in mind: producing more workers — from the U.P.S. driver to the software engineer — who can think creatively.

“One thing we know about creativity is that it typically occurs when people who have mastered two or more quite different fields use the framework in one to think afresh about the other,” said Mr. Tucker. Thus, his report focuses on “how to make that kind of thinking integral to every level of education.”

That means, he adds, revamping an education system designed in the 1900s for people to do “routine work,” and refocusing it on producing people who can imagine things that have never been available before, who can create ingenious marketing and sales campaigns, write books, build furniture, make movies and design software “that will capture people’s imaginations and become indispensable for millions.”

That can’t be done without higher levels of reading, writing, speaking, math, science, literature and the arts. We have no choice, argues Mr. Tucker, because we have entered an era in which “comfort with ideas and abstractions is the passport to a good job, in which creativity and innovation are the key to the good life” and in which the constant ability to learn how to learn will be the only security you have.

Economics is not like war. It can be win-win. We, China, India and Europe can all flourish. But the ones who flourish most will be those who develop the best broad-based education system, to have the most people doing and designing the most things we can’t even imagine today. China still has to make some very big changes to get there — but so do we.