The Entrepreneurs Club

CNNMoney.com:

Cody Chang and Jonathan Mohan didn’t even know what an entrepreneur was when they signed up for a class on business and entrepreneurship at their local YMCA.

But the two high schoolers did know they were intrigued by the free classes offered by FutureWorks to ninth and tenth graders interested in starting a business.

Mohan and Chang paired up to start their own fruit smoothie enterprise. Their brainchild, Deloozie’s, won them the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship regional business plan competition and secured them a mentor from Smith Barney as well as $1,200 in seed money.

Smoothies will be grouped, not by flavors, but by categories like “Oh, I forgot my breakfast!” and “Oh, I forgot my lunch!” And each frozen beverage will come with funny facts and prizes will be awarded to customers who can correctly answer trivia questions, Mohan says.

More and more high schools are getting into the start-up game with entrepreneurial classes for students interested in learning about launching their own businesses.

Labels: business, entrepreneur, money, startup

# posted by Smart Man @ 3:33 AM

I'll run through a little checklist of consistent, successful marketing strategies that apply to virtually any businesses.

In fact, there are seven strategies that can help you stimulate new business, increase business from existent customers and build repeat business. You may not be able to use all of them in your business but you can certainly use some of them.

#1) A system of frequent buyer rewards. Today all major airlines and many hotel chains are using this technique to capture repeat business from their clientele. In Phoenix the Weiss Guys Car Wash uses this same idea. They issue each customer a little plastic punch card. After the customer pays for a certain number of washes, recorded on the card, they can then redeem the card for a free wash.

The idea of the frequent buyer type incentive is to encourage the customer to return to your business rather than spreading his business around. In order to make this type of incentive even more effective you can tie it to an expiration date so that the points have to be accumulated and redeemed within a certain time period.

#2) Discounting is probably the most commonly used marketing strategy in business. Just about every business in America uses discounts at various times in various ways. One word of caution about discounting, if it's overused it loses its effectiveness.

The retail furniture industry, for example, is finding that 'special this weekend only' sale type advertising is losing its effectiveness the more they use it.

Also artificial discounting is very dangerous in the long run. The American automobile industry did itself great, apparently permanent damage with artificial discounting so that today everybody knows that the sticker price on a car is meaningless and every price is negotiable.

It's important to have a logical reason tied to a discount opportunity. Otherwise you are essentially admitting that your regular prices are excessive. Inventory overstock, an anniversary, a holiday celebration, an introductory offer for new customers, a special offer on a new product or service, these are all examples of logical, acceptable reasons for discounts.

#3) The use of premiums, which I believe is a much better way to incentivize your customers and prospects to buy. We'll be covering this in detail in the next Successful Marketing Strategy that you'll be receiving in just a couple of days.

Dan Kennedy, http://www.dankennedy.com/

Labels: business, entrepreneur, money, startup

# posted by Smart Man @ 3:33 AM

See following list and choose by your opinion:

• Be Entrepreneur
• The Internet Buzz
• The Online Niche
• The Entrepreneur Way
• The Technology Buzz
• The Marketing Notes
• The Marketing Stories
• The Online Startup
• The Webmaster Choise
• The Startup Efforts
• The Market Researches
• The Online Millionaires
• The Reality Developer
• The Money Independence
• The Financial Growth
• The Entrepreneurs Stories
• The Web Millionaire
• The Entrepreneurs Tips

Labels: business, entrepreneur, money, startup

# posted by Smart Man @ 3:22 AM

http://www.clubplanet.com/

In 1995, this oft-rejected newcomer to New York City's club scene found a way to get past the doorman of every hot club he longed to enter--start a website offering club-goers free club reviews and information. The now-savvy Fox recalls his earlier, awkward days: "I showed up at a club wearing green shorts, and everyone was in black. The bouncer looked at me and said, 'There's no way.'"

Working on the website in his off hours at first, Fox chucked his investment banking job in 1997 to give Clubplanet.com (then ClubNYC.com) his all. Volunteers provided early club reviews, until Fox hired a full-time editorial staff in 1999. Then he came up with a new idea: Start a guest list on his site for access to otherwise hard-to-get-into clubs. By offering a discounted cover charge to those who both signed up on the site and arrived at the club before midnight, Fox helped enhance the exclusivity of the clubs as well as increase revenue. Club owners were dubious about Fox's concept at first, but when hundreds of club-goers who signed up showed up at their doors, the owners gladly forged relationships with the innovator and paid him a "bounty" for every head he brought in.

Fox installed a management team for Clubplanet.com so he could focus on two other businesses he was involved in, but he admits giving up control was a mistake. Upon learning of Clubplanet.com's mismanagement and financial woes, Fox engaged in a bitter struggle to regain control. He ultimately won, but the battle took its toll on the company. He was forced to lay off employees he had never met. With only two employees, Fox started back at square one, selling his other companies to refocus on his "baby."

Clubplanet.com has grown to include thousands of club listings around the United States and the United Kingdom, and now syndicates its content to Citysearch, newspapers, Yahoo! and other third-party clients. Fox also recently launched NocheLatino.com, an upscale, urban Latino version of Clubplanet.com, and is working on a version for the gay community. He's since expanded his empire to include a New Year's Eve event ticketing site, NewYears.com; an exclusive club access site, CoolJunkie.com; a ticketing company, WantTickets.com; and an offline event and marketing company, Track Entertainment.

How much money do these sites generate for Andrew Fox? Last year it was a cool 22 million US Dollars.

Labels: business, entrepreneur, money, startup

# posted by Smart Man @ 3:22 AM

Michael Senoff’s Story.

http://www.hardtofindseminars.com

I first learned about Jay Abraham from a video by Tony Robbins. Jay was speaking at one of Tony's expensive Life Mastery seminars. I was totally blown away by Jay's ideas. Immediately, I started looking for his seminar products.

The first item I was looking for was a set of tapes of the famous Jay Abraham $20,000 protégé mentor training seminar from 1990. You read that right: $20,000. That's how much it cost to attend. The press called it: "The world's most expensive seminar". The students were there to learn how to become a master marketing wizard just like Jay Abraham.

I wanted to be a marketing wizard too, but I did not want to spend $20,000. Anyone that attended the seminar received a copy of the entire program on a set of audiotapes. I knew If I could just find someone who attended the seminar, I might be able to borrow their tapes. If so, I could get a $20,000 Jay Abraham marketing education for free.

I did some digging and managed to find a guy from Northern California who had attended the seminar. I asked to buy his tapes. He said no but agreed to fax me the names of all the people who went to the seminar in Southern California. I found a lady on the list who lived in San Diego. I called her and told her I was looking for a set of the tapes from the Jay Abraham seminars. She said she had them and I negotiated a price of $50. I got the complete $20,000 seminar for only $50.

I studied these marketing materials day and night for six months. I was listening to Jay Abraham while I was jogging, while I was driving, and while I was doing yard work. I would even go to sleep with a Walkman on my head literally dreaming about marketing. That is how powerful and addictive these marketing materials and tapes are.

Along with the 55 audiotape seminar, there was a list of 900 protégés who had trained under Jay Abraham in four previous seminar sessions. The list was intended to be a tool for the seminar attendees to network with each other. When I saw this list, I knew I had hit pay dirt. More on that in a minute.

You see, like a lot of guys, I loved to barbecue outdoors. I was shopping for a new grill and one hot summer day in July I came across the most extraordinary barbecue grill I had ever seen. It is called a "Kamado" and it was billed as the world's finest ceramic smoker-grill.

Well, I knew I had to have one. There was only one little problem. This gorgeous Blue ceramic tiled Kamado grill sells for $1895 plus shipping.

Now I knew there was no way my wife was going to let me spend this kind of money on "a grill", so I told my wife I was going to sell my Jay Abraham tapes and use the money to buy my blue Kamado grill!

The original set of Jay Abraham protégé tapes that I had bought for $50 sold right away for $1700 on my very first marketing effort. I was stunned! I had made a killing the first time out of the gate.

To make sure this was not a one-time fluke, I promoted another less expensive set of Jay Abraham boot camp tapes the next day. This set sold very quickly for $900.

After these two sales, I have enough profits to become the proud owner of a brand-new blue Kamado ceramic smoker, and there was not a thing my wife could do or say about it.

Convinced that I had a hungry market, I went right to work. I still had the list that I mentioned earlier of the 900 Jay Abraham protégés who possessed all of these valuable Jay Abraham products. All I had to do is track them down.

Finding people from a ten-year-old list was no easy task. Most of the phone numbers were wrong. Many of the people no longer had the seminar materials. But one out of ten people I made contact with did. Usually, it was as neatly packed away as it was the day they brought it home from the seminar. Many tapes had never been used, not even once and the printed materials were in pristine condition.

As I continued to contact these people, I made another discovery: A person who pays $20,000 for a seminar is considered a gold mine to marketing information sellers like Jay Abraham, Gary Halbert, Dan Kennedy, and Ted Nicholas. These marketing gurus will spend thousands of dollars to locate and have a chance to sell to this type of buyer who they refer to as 'Big Fish'.

These sellers get together to enter into joint venture partnerships. They refer and endorse each other's marketing materials to these same hot buyers using all their in-house customer lists.

Because of this, when I found a person who had attended the $20,000 Jay Abraham seminar, they would usually have tons of other marketing materials from all the other great marketing promoters as well.

All the materials I sell are purchased from the original owners. Many have even mortgaged their homes and maxed out their credit cards just to get their hands on this critical information. I make these packages available to you at huge discounts.

Isn’t it a great business idea?

Labels: business, entrepreneur, money, startup

# posted by Smart Man @ 3:19 AM