3 Great Entrepreneur Events in Palm Coast this Fall

Palm Coast and Flagler County entrepreneur community has much luck this Fall with three great events lined up in late September and early October:

Entrepreneur Night at The Humidor, European Village
This free event features premium cigars, $2 drafts, a selection of red, white, and port wine, complimentary food and a bunch of fellow Flagler County business owners to chat, network, and relax with.

The event will take place at the Humidor Cigar Lounge on Tuesday, September 27th from 5:30 to 8:00 PM.  This is a free event.  You can just come by, or feel free to RSVP on Meetup.com or on Facebook

Dave Ramsey Live: Entreleadership
Join Dave Ramsey live, as he shares how to grow your business and lead your team from a biblical perspective. EntreLeadership is Dave Ramsey’s premier leadership training program where he personally teaches individuals, teams, and businesses how to grow.

Whether you’re an individual who wants to develop your leadership abilities, a business or organizational leader who wants to develop your team, or an entrepreneur who wants to build a business on solid, proven principles, EntreLeadership is for you.  The event will take place at the Parkview Baptist Church on Friday, September 30, 2011 from 9:45am-5:00pm.  Tickets are $39.  More info here.

Inaugural Business2Business Expo at Hammock Beach Resort
This all-day event includes vendor booths, keynote speech by Dr. Ted Anders, lunch and cocktail party, and multiple workshops.  If you are looking to take a positive step to grow your business, this is the event for you. The event is organized The Palm Coast Business Assistance Center in partnership with the Small Business Development Center (SBDC) at UCF on October 7th at Hammock Beach Resort from 9:00AM to 5:00PM.  Participation is $100 which includes vendor booth, lunch, cocktail party, and entry to keynote speech session and workshops.  More info here.

On a side note, Palm Coast's entrepreneur-hub, Office Divvy ™ is sponsoring 3 lucky participants through a raffle. It includes your tradeshow-booth, lunch, cocktail and keynote and educational sessions.  Enter here to win a full package: Palm Coast B2B Expo Raffle.

Palm Coast Small Business Assistance Center Grand Opening

Palm Coast Small Business Assistance Staff

City of Palm Coast established a Business Assistance Center, soft launched in May 2011, celebrated its grand opening today with many of the Palm Coast and Flagler County government officials, economic development folks, and business leaders present.

The new Business Assistance Center is affiliated with the University of Central Florida Small Business Development Center (SBDC) network, and it will operate as a UCF SBDC sub-center, under the umbrella of City of Palm Coast, and will be managed by a Palm Coast resident, a retired executive and entrepreneur, Joe Roy.



The new space for Palm Coast Business Assistance Center does not resemble the typical government office you may have gotten used to. It's presented as a professional space with soft-colors, where the staff will meet you with smiling faces and a helpful attitude towards the business owners.

The physical location is at the City of Palm Coast offices, at Suite 105 located in City Marketplace (previously referred to as City Walk). It houses the offices of the previous Business License department staff, the Palm Coast Economic Development Team-leader Beau Falgout's office, as well the new SBDC area manager Joe Roy's office.

In today's short ceremony Palm Coast mayor Jon Netts said:

" We're going to solve our problems ourselves. We're going to do it ourselves. We're going to work hard. We understand local businesses, entrepreneurial startup businesses, and businesses that can grow to so called second stage businesses...that's our future. That's what this is all about!"

Here's the full contacts of the new Business Assistance Center if you have any questions, have a business need or dilemma, or would like to extend a warm welcome to Joe Roy:

    Joseph Roy, Area Manager
    Palm Coast Business Assistance Center
    UCF Small Business Development Center
    At the City of Palm Coast
    386-986-4765

Top 6 Ways Young Tech Companies Are Changing The Way We Do Business

Things are changing around us everyday.  Sometimes it seems as though it is at breakneck speed and tough to keep up.  Things we dreamed of as kids watching shows like Start Trek, Buck Rogers, the Jetsons, etc. seem as though they are reality today.  People starting cars from their phones.  Taking a picture and sharing and sharing it with friends and family thousands of miles away within seconds.  So forth an so on.  A lot of these innovations and progress are coming from young companies and startups that are fearless and have vision that is truly inspiring.  Let's a take a look at 5 ways these innovators are changing the world and business:

1. Everyone is the R and D Department - Open source mainly used in the tech world is a term in which everyone has access to the end-user code.  The Android operating system is a great example here.  Typically in the tech world the software a company produces and the coding have been it's 'secret sauce'. Microsoft, Apple, etc. are all closed.  You have a smaller group of select people with access to develop further products.  In the open source world, anyone can develop.  In this environment you get products coming faster and sometimes better.  The Android OS showing up on phones and mobile devices (including e-readers) all over has allowed many companies to use the code to develop new products and customize the system so it is unique to their product.  The Nook Color, for example, is an Android OS built ereader.  But the interface looks different than other Android devices.  The product is easily updated, the company gets a larger pool of people to draw from in terms of developers, so forth and so on.  Companies like Google and Mozilla have been huge advocates for open source and have benefited a great deal from it while providing users with great products.  Some companies have taken this to another level soliciting ideas for designs directly from the public.  Car designs, fashions, so forth and so on.
2. The ad game - Since things like radios and TV's came out the ad game hasn't changed very much.  Users were forced to listen or watch an ad about a product or service.  It was this 'sign' in front of as many viewers as possible approach.  The problems with that approach are over time, human conditioning learns to "tune it out" and we become numb to it.  Likewise, companies could never really know the effectiveness of the ad.  Did it in fact impact their business?  Advertising on the web first started with the same approach, but then Google changed the game dramatically with pay-per-click and relevancy.  The Google method was small ads which were relevant to the content on the site (therefore relevant to the visitor) and the advertiser paid when visitor clicked the ad.  The site owner benefits, Google benefits, and the advertiser benefits by seeing real data to make decisions.  Just a few years later, that concept is being expanded upon with great benefits to everyone.  Ads in mobile devices which allows developers an income to continue to develop great new applications, ads that are more informative, so forth and so on.  Likewise, companies like Groupon have taken the coupon ad idea to a whole new level.  Who'd have ever thought people would pay to save?  Well, they did and with huge success.  And nobody gets the deal until enough people sign up.  Genius!  The coupon is changed forever!
3. Customer relations is about engagement - The age-old saying in the customer service world is that if people are upset with your company, they will tell 11 people.  Some companies found out the hard way that the number is actually far higher as things like Facebook and Twitter took hold.  Some companies even tried suing Facebook users with cease and desist orders who spoke negatively about their company.  As you can guess, that didn't go so well.  Companies are finding that the best method of customer relations is to insert yourself into the conversation.  As Mark Zuckerberg found, people are inherently advertising for companies anyway through the things we share (i.e. product likes, experiences, so forth and so on).  Therefore, companies that are truly engaging in the conversations are advertising while executing and improving their customer relations at the same time.  Typically two things handled by two entirely separate departments.
4. The customer's voice is much louder - The whole legal battle that went on with Napster I've always viewed this as the biggest consumer outcry against an industry in my lifetime.  People were "screaming" at the music industry to let them get the product they way they wanted to get it.  The good majority of people didn't want the product for free.  They were willing to pay for it, but the industry wouldn't offer it that way.  They invested millions in trying to stop digitized music to the extent of suing their own customers. In the end who won?  The customer and . . . Apple.  The music industry and music sellers never took the time to develop how to deliver digital music themselves and thus have been forced to turn that over to other companies.  Interestingly enough, the book sellers seemingly learned from this.  Booksellers saw the trend, heard the customer, and developed ways to deliver digital books to customers themselves today.  The movie industry on the other hand is still going the music industry route and trying to block digital and streaming movies at all costs.  Go figure.
5. Competitors are partners - I love this one and know this idea drives long-term managers crazy.  Traditionally you share nothing with your competition because they might steal your idea.  When the iPhone and iPod Touch came out and opened the doorway for apps, the floodgates opened up in terms of possibilities and realities.  Unlike the development of large scale software packages that were limited in terms of uses and getting distributed to the masses, apps can be developed at much lower costs with a huge distribution system to users.  Not only do the users gain powerful ways to do things, Apple and the developers both benefit as more of a "partnership" style relationship.  Other models even have startup groups working in shared space sometimes sharing ideas.  Old school business managers cringe over this, because traditionally we have always kept our ideas secret for competitive reasons.  Granted you don't share out everything, but these types of environments can be very rewarding for those starting out and overcoming small hurdles at times.  
6. For the first time, we can reduce costs AND improve services.  We all know the "cutting" things in workplaces.  Every time we hear it . . . stress rolls in.  Why?  Because we know either we're going or our jobs are going to get all that much more difficult.  Small businesses today can automate and streamline a great deal of their administrative functions to dramatically reduce costs while increasing levels of service at the same time.  A simple example is almost eliminating the need for faxing and/or mailing by using email and attachments.  The delivery is quicker and cleaner, and far less expensive.  Tablets and other mobile devices allow companies to go virtually paperless and can even reduce billing through mobile pay services.  Easier for the customer, quicker payment, and reduced billing costs.  

It's an exciting time right now in the business world.  Tech in business should always be viewed as tools and as an investment.  The tech tools available today are great investments that are allowing businesses to operate and provide services like never before.  They may seem contrary to what we are comfortable with, but I guarantee that if you truly open your mind a bit and look at the options before you . . . all those things you wish you could do before, you can do today.  Well, except for beam yourself to work which I am still waiting for that app.  

Is Technology and Online Social Networks Making us Less Social?

I was scanning through a local forum the other day and came across a topic header which posed the question of whether technology was making us less social?  It's a great question to ask.  Some of the responses spoke of preferences for people to want to receive text messages rather than phone calls, reduced customer service, so forth an so on.  In all honesty, there really isn't a viable means to actually measure this question and the idea of 'less social' is purely speculative in my opinion.  The better questions are whether technology is increasing our interactions and how is that changing.

The truth is that interactions online are actually measurable and there is very interesting data that is available.  Of the roughly 137 million users in US (roughly 500 million worldwide) on Facebook alone, statistics show that users typically stop by daily.  One of the biggest components to any of these services (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, etc.) is the ability to 'share' information with others in real-time.  We are seeing this component built in more and more to things we use everyday such as smartphones (iPhone, Droids, Palm OS, etc.), ereaders (Kindle, Nookcolor), even our TV's and Blu-ray players.  If I see a news article on my phone, I can easily share that with others with a tap of the screen.  I can even share photos at Disney to others immediately while at the park which I actually did recently.  I can easily rate Netflix movies on my blu-ray player instantly letting others know my recommendations.  And the list goes on and on.  So, if anything, my 'interactions' have actually increased.  In the past, doing any of this would have required me to either get on the phone or tell the person the next time I saw them which would have most likely been forgotten by then.

Then there is the business world.  This is the area where I see huge advances in improvements to serving customers through technology.  One of the things I hate to do is call the customer service line and tediously navigate through the labyrinth  of menus or wait on hold forever.  Now there are online chat options for support.  I love this when I need a question answered in most cases.  For technical support questions not only can I have a print out of the steps I might need to correct the issue, but I can share better detailed information for the support person.  There are usually far less delays in getting someone as well.  Likewise, support forums users provide their experiences, issues, and resolutions which provides a great way to find resolutions.  In these cases you've now taken the 'support' department and expanded it by empowering users to share their findings with others. 

Are there 'pitfalls' in the way in which some use technology which reduces their physical interactions with others?  Absolutely.  One of the biggest problems I see being the reason is the lack of properly educating people on how to properly use these new tools.  We've all just been left to 'figure it out', and the most important places to incorporate these tools and teach young people which is schools; often shy away from these tools and incorporating them into daily education mostly due to fear of misuse and understanding at the educator level.  Take for example email.  Every student in school today will undoubtedly be using email within their jobs in the future.  Where do they learn to use email?  Either at home by just being given an account with little or no direction at all in proper use or nowhere.  Why don't students have school provided email accounts?  The benefits are enormous and better prepares students for the future by properly teaching them to use organization provided email.  You actually don't even need much today to put this in place.  If it is a financial issue and one had to choose between a TV and a computer (most have them) and internet (about $30/month), take the computer and internet.  The information and uses are far superior.  In fact, schools can provide this today for next near nothing through services like Google Apps for Education.  Ok, enough of my education rant.

The other issue I often see is that we view the online world as something entirely different and over-consumption can in fact cause people to become 'disconnected'.  Take video games for example.  It's very cool that I can play a game with others all over the world at the same time.  But playing the same violent game for hours and days on end can cause people to become disconnected to the reality of the harm they can cause others.  So should parents monitor and place boundaries on video game play?  Absolutely, and they should also reinforce the values of treating others with respect. 

Granted, just like any technology tool; people will use them improperly and inappropriately.  It's almost tradition around this time of year for someone to sit on the copy machine at the office party isn't it?  Someone will undoubtedly post something online that may hurt another, but haven't hand-passed notes done the same in the past?  The truth is that they have.  So the technology isn't the issue but rather just common breakdowns in making good social decisions.

How is technology improving your interactions in personal or business life?

Is Location-Based Social Networking The Next Big Thing . . . or a Bust?

Since the launches of Friendster and the explosion of MySpace and Facebook in the early part of the century, online social networking has become a part of mainstream life.  What once was thought to be just a place for teenagers, has become services used by every generation.  They have enhanced and changed the way we communicate.  They have become significant components for businesses to advertise and engage their customer base.  And with the ever growing mobile devices, the services have been evolving at paces that are often difficult to keep up with.  The most recent evolution is what is called 'location-based' social networking.  The most notable here is Foursquare that opened about a year ago.  The concept is that users share their location with others (a business or local site) and can post comments about it.  The more a user 'checks-in' at a location, the more points they earn and have the opportunity to attain the ever-coveted 'Mayor' designation of a location.  Users can also set the service to update their friends on Twitter and Facebook with each 'Check-In'.  Obviously there are debates and concerns over sharing one's location and the personal security of that, but more important is whether this type of social networking can capture enough of an audience to truly be the 'next big thing' in social networking or is it just a 'fad'?  Then again, how many people laughed at Twitter and are now practically begging others to 'Follow me'.  One thing stands certain, mobile social networking is in growing in leaps and bounds. 

Because the Foursquare service is relatively new and has captured almost 10,000 users (according to QuantCast.com) in such a short period of time, location-based social networking may be something that is attractive and can become very popular long-term.  One thing is true about online social networking and that is that it is evolving as users grow in the use of the services.  Another emerging trend is also becoming a truth and that is that the attraction can fade quickly and long-term success comes from a more mature generation of users.  MySpace.com has a primary user base of 13-34 years old which comprises 71% of it's users and 24% being 35-50+.  They have seen a huge decline in membership from over 80 million in 2007 to 46 million this year.  At the same time, Facebook.com has a primary user base of 13-34 years old which comprises 64% of it's users and 32% being 35-50+.  Facebook.com has grown from about 9 million users in 2007 to over 130 million in 2010!  Twitter.com has roughly 39 million users with 81% being over the age of 18.  One other notable quality is the 'group setting' for the user.  MySpace is primarily focused on individual profile pages and the appearance of them.  Facebook and Twitter are more focused on the streams of updates from friends and followers. 

Foursquare.com  is different than other social networking services in that it is more about the promotion of the location than the user themselves. Some businesses have already begun to embrace the service with open arms.  Pizza Hut began testing 'freebie' promotions to 'Mayors' of their locations (see the article from PRNewsWire).  Starbucks has also began testing discounts to those who are frequent 'Check-ins' and 'Mayors'.  (see the article from Mashable.com).  Like these, the early business embracers of the service seems to be primarily restaurants.  The question then becomes can this industry be enough to sustain the service long-term?  Couple that with the 'creepiness' of actively and consistently announcing to large groups of people exactly where you are numerous times each day and you may see barriers to the growth of users.

Does that mean 'location-based' networking will peak and fall?  I don't think so.  What I personally see happening are viable and powerful evolutions of the service.  Take for example the use of location-based community notifications of issues that get sent directly to local governments being applied more and more throughout the country.  One very interesting online service is from SeeClickFix.com.  This online and mobile app-based service allows users of smartphones like the iPhone, Android, and Blackberry to take a photo of an issue and the location and photo is sent directly to a designated local administrator via email notification.  The issues are then automatically mapped for other residents to view and track online.  New York City has launched its own mobile app cwith similar features to empower residents.

Another adaptation of the 'check-in' model is from GetGlue.com.   Rather than the user 'check-in' to a location, they are 'checking-in' to  type of media (i.e. books, movies, TV Shows, events, etc.) that is shared with others.  In turn, users can build networks around similar likes and share thoughts.  This one is very new and will be very interesting to see how it performs over time especially since it has grown to over 38,000 users since it's launch in July of this year.  This particular model has a very solid foundation in my opinion since it once again puts the focus on the user while empowering the user to promote the product in a social setting.  Oh, and you get to earn 'stickers'!  I just started using the service and have 2.  Not a lot I know, but I think they are cool stickers. 

For wide-scale adoption for location-based social networking for businesses, marketers will need to get more creative in my opinion.  The current model from Foursquare.com seeks to obviously gain wide-scale recognition of a location and business but focuses on rewarding just a few for their repeat business.  Likewise, the 'badge' and 'mayoral' rewards may not sustain long-term motivation for users.  Businesses may want to test promotions which reward many with 'exclusive' discounts for even one time 'check-ins'.  For example, say you have a store promotion of 20% off various items in your store and the store then offers an additional 10% off for Foursquare users that show they have checked in when arriving at the store.  In those cases you then broaden your advertising reach significantly with real tangible rewards to users.  Would that work?  Not sure, but it would be an interesting test to see tried. 

Right now, it is too early to tell the long-term adoption and possible success of location-based social networking.  Are there some trying this service locally?  Absolutely.  Ky Ekinci of Office Divvy is a very active user of the service.  Mark Woods (aka @TikiTender) of Golden Lion Cafe is another pretty active user and the 'Mayor' of Golden Lion Cafe. 

What are your thoughts on location-based social networking?  How are you using it for business?  What are your thoughts on publicizing your location to others?