Business Success Center

Proven programs that grow great businesses for great people who care.

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First Looks Forum Eye-opener for a First-time Entrepreneur!

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It was a great experience meeting and talking with SXSW Interactive Festival director Hugh Forrest.

It was a great experience meeting and talking with SXSW Interactive Festival director Hugh Forrest.

I’m taking a different approach towards starting up my own self-sustaining business. What long-time and successful business owners were able to offer me, a musician by trade, at the Business Success Center (BSC) and Texas Entrepreneurs Networks (TEN) First Looks Forum in October was an eye opener.

I compose, perform, teach and am currently a student at the University of Texas, and am also about to graduate soon. I have a tough time balancing the aforementioned and trying to get higher paying gigs. [Read more…]

Crowdfunding Trends Update

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Worth reading if you're considering investing in or using crowdfunding for your business.

Worth reading if you’re considering investing in or using crowdfunding for your business.

Crowdfunding, is also known as hyper funding, crowd financing, and equity crowdfunding.

Crowdfunding or crowd funding is defined in Wikipedia as “the collective cooperation, attention and trust by people who network and pool their money and other resources together, usually via the internet, to support efforts initiated by other people or organizations.” [Read more…]

3 Ways Business Grants Have Changed for Good & 3 Ways to Prepare

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MSB_Poster_Option-1_043012.pdf-1-pageLook out world, here it comes. You read it here first. After a “gazillion” years of how business grants work, the world  has changed. Maybe for good!

Who did it? Chase Bank and LivingSocial. (In full disclosure we are going after this grant. We want to use the money  to take our Owners MBA™ for existing business online, add ebooks, apps, and include special segments for veterans, rural business owners, and owners who are disabled. We also want to create an owners community as we did for our Entrepreneurs’ Association in the 1990’s.)

Why did they do it? It depends on whom you ask.

What’s different? [Read more…]

3 Networking Skills Every Introvert Has

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Rodin's "The Thinker" could have been named "The Introvert". Photo by James Whitesmith.

Rodin’s “The Thinker” could have been named “The Introvert”. Photo by James Whitesmith.

Networking skills are not the exclusive property of extroverts. Introverts have them, too.

Not the belle or beau of the ball? Don’t do well in groups? Are you kind of shy or just hate playing the networking game? You can still be a great networker. The best part is, you don’t have to and shouldn’t change you.

Networking Rules

You do have to play by the rules. Networking is a balancing act; give and take. It’s not just about sales or prospecting. Although these can happen.  You can also use it for finding friends, jobs, fun places to go or avoid, and a million other things. Think about it as a combination of a “net” which gathers things in and keeps things out and a lot of hard “work”. Believe me, it doesn’t come easy to extroverts either although it may seem that way. [Read more…]