The Entrepreneurship Chronicle
Zero Million - The Entrepreneurship Chronicle
  The Entrepreneurship Chronicle :: April 2009 Issue :: 44

Editor: Ryan Allis
Sent With: iContact


QUOTE OF THE MONTH

"Only undertake what you can do in an excellent fashion. There are no prizes for average performance."

Brian Tracy


Dear [fname],

I hope you have made progress on your entrepreneurial vision and that you gain value from this issue of The Entrepreneurship Chronicle!

In Chapel Hill, we are holding Entrepreneur & Social Entrepreneur Meetups once per month at my home. If you live in the area and care about changing the world, come on out. Details on the meetups can be found on the Facebook Group.

Entrepreneurially Yours,
Ryan P. Allis, CEO
iContact Corp.
2635 Meridian Parkway
Durham, NC
www.iContact.com


   Table of Contents
Entrepreneur & Social Entrepreneur Meetup #27
Zeromillion

This past month's Entrepreneur and Social Entrepreneurship Meetup was a huge success. Thank you to everyone who attended. As many of you may have noticed, we were recording video during the meetup, and we are proud to make those videos public.

Every month, we will be posting the videos of the meetup and the presentations - The videos from this past meetup can be found here!.

Video 1: Nate Seaman presenting Bike & Build

Video 2: Dan Moore presenting Triangle Gives Back

Video 3: Gene Nichol presenting UNC Center for Poverty, Work and Opportunity

Video 4: Ryan Allis presenting White House Summit

Video 5: Recommended Reading

(Read the Rest of this Article Here....)


For those of you who were not able to attend, I hope to see you at this month's event. All events are posted on our Facebook Group. The next event is Thursday, April 16th!

Kiva - Loans that change lives

Kiva - Loans that change lives
"Give a man a fish and you've fed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you've fed him for life." Add in Kiva and the connectivity of the internet, and you've put that man or woman into their own fishing business. Kiva acts as the connection point between regular people who have the means and desire to help others help themselves and those who need the help. Using the revolutionary concept of micro-financing, Kiva enables those in the developed world with even a little bit of capital to lend it to small businesses in the developing world. Kiva's partners work on the local level to provide training and support to these budding entrepreneurs. Because these are loans the recipients pay them back as they are able, allowing the lender to reinvest and multiply the number of people moving from poor to self-sustaining.

Forbes magazine said of Kiva that it "mixes the entrepreneurial daring of Google with the do-gooder ethos of Bono." Kiva has been praised for its ability to maximize the amount of investors' funds that actually get to the person being helped. It does this by utilizing the power of the Internet and by partnering with existing, experienced micro-finance organizations. In a recent week nearly 12,000 individual lenders loaned over $800,000 to nearly 2400 new entrepreneurs around the world. Find out how for as little as $25 you can start a fellow human being on the path to productive self-sufficiency by visiting their site!.

(To learn more or get involved visit: www.kiva.org/app.php )

The Great Challenge of Our Generation
Ryan Allis

I write as my roommates watch the sci-fi movie Anti-Body through the amazing new Xbox/Netflix partnership in a cold and icy Chapel Hill…

This weekend I had the opportunity to speak at StartingBloc’s Greater New York Institute for Social Innovation at Yale University in New Haven. I had the chance to speak after Tom Szaky, the 27 year old CEO of TerraCycle, who is good work on upcycling waste into usable products.

In attendance were 150 of the smartest, most ambitious, and most caring individuals I’ve met, all from age 19 to 30. 25% were undergrads, 25% were grad students, and 50% were young professionals from firms like Goldman, JP Morgan, Acumen, Ashoka, McKinsey. They were all social entrepreneurs or future social entrepreneurs. If you’re under 30 and interested in social responsibility you should apply for their future Institutes in New York, Boston, or London.

StartingBloc has now reached 1000 fellows who have gone through their program. I first met their founder, the 27 year-old ebullient Kenyan Jo Opot last May in New York. She and their Director of Programs Taryn Miller-Stevens are examples of committed, driven, caring world changers.

I challenged the group to over the next 50 years, work together to create a world in which...

  1. There is no killing of humans on a mass scale (genocide or warfare);
  2. All humans have access to the basic human needs of clean water, nutritious food, shelter, and primary education;
  3. We end preventable diseases like malaria, TB, and measles; and
  4. We are environmentally sustainable

(Read the Rest of this Article Here....)

Patience and Perseverance Are Essential Ingredients to BIG TIME Success
Fabienne Fredrickson

"The day you plant the seed is NOT the day you eat the fruit. Don't worry, don't get frustrated, be persistent. It's on its way to you." That's a thought that always stays with me in taking my business (or one of my clients' businesses) to the very next level. Thing is, we're conditioned through the media that everything is supposed to happen miraculously quickly in our lives:

  • "Thinner thighs in 30 days"
  • "Quit smoking in 2 hours"
  • "Build your list to 30,000 people in 4 months"
  • "Sell $100,000.00 worth of products in 2 hours"

Whoa. Slow down for a second!

Yes, I guess these can be done... by some who've been at it for years. But what I see is that, for most people, this sometimes sets up completely unrealistic expectations of what we're capable of, and when our initial efforts don't meet those grandiose self-imposed expectations quickly, we begin to go into a place of doubt, worry, fear and then inevitably, resentment and anger, wanting to throw the baby out with the bath water.

As solo-entrepreneurs begin to implement BIG steps in their marketing, they often see results immediately, which is comforting. But then, as they begin to stretch beyond their comfort zone and tackle even bigger projects that require some effort for implementation, and it takes some time to do so, sometimes the results need some time to take root. The entrepreneur diligently puts things in place, and it seems like it's taken a lot out of them.

(Read the Rest of this Article Here....)


Fabienne Fredrickson is the founder of the Client Attraction System

Zero to One Million: How I Built My Company to $1 Million in Sales . . . and How You Can, Too
Ryan Allis

Book Description

Do You Want to Become a Multi-Millionaire Entrepreneur? Here's How.

By the time Ryan Allis had reached the age of twenty-one, he had achieved the financial goal most people just dream about: He made built his company to one million in sales. Allis has since grown his company iContact Corp., a provider of Web-based email marketing and online communication softwares, to $10 million per year in sales, and has helped numerous clients increase their sales dramatically.

Now Allis shares the secrets of his lightning-fast success with you. In Zero to One Million, he details his simple yet innovative evaluation system of "Market-Advantages-Return" to help you determine if your business idea is viable. Once you have a solid foundation, you can apply his advice for successfully running your business-from initial planning to managing high-speed growth.

  • Evaluate your business idea using the innovative MAR system
  • Write a business plan sure to excite your investors
  • Launch your company with minimal expenditure
  • Boost online sales using cutting-edge marketing strategies
  • Watch all your hard work transform into millions

Did you know that eighty-one percent of millionaires are entrepreneurs? Join the pantheon of successful businessmen and women with Zero to One Million.

About the Author

Ryan P. Allis is CEO of iContact Corp., a venture-backed email marketing and online communications firm that has grown from nothing to over $10 million in annual sales and 80 employees. Ryan is also the Chairman of the web marketing firm Virante, Inc.

(Buy the Book....)

Connect With Ryan
Connect Via Facebook

Do you have a Facebook account? If so, Ryan's on Facebook too. Just look up Ryan Allis (the one at UNC-Chapel Hill). Send Ryan a message or a friend request.

Connect Via Linked In Ryan also uses LinkedIn. If you want to connect to Ryan on Linked in just look him up and send a connection request to allisr [at] icontact.com.

Follow on Twitter

Or Follow Ryan on Twitter: ryanallis

Don't have Facebook or LinkedIn but still want to ask Ryan a question? Feel free to email Ryan at allisr [at] icontact.com. Thank you!

Closing Notes

This concludes issue #44 of The Entrepreneurship Chronicle. If you are not subscribed and would like to subscribe, please visit http://www.zeromillion.com. If you would like to contribute content, become involved with the zeromillion.com team, make suggestions, or provide feedback please feel free to contact us at info@virante.com.

This newsletter is published by www.zeromillion.com with support from the Entrepreneurs' Coalition. The newsletter is sent using the iContact email marketing software.

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