Winner of the Emerging Corporate Growth Award
1164_ 2/20/12 - For the past number of years we've covered an important conference here in Denver and we are looking forward again to the ACG Denver Corporate Growth Conference coming next month, March 13-14th. Larry corralled John Griffith, the founder and president of Alpine Waste and Recycling, recipient of the ACG Emerging Corporate Growth Award. Of course, it's great to be a winner but more than that, John tells us that they see it as a real validation for the investment in innovation and more than that the buy in of their employees in those innovations and their ability to implement those things. "So, in short, it's a real thrill for all of us at Alpine." Alpine was founded in 1999, a one-man, one-truck operation started with the premise of offering a better level of service than their competition. Since those early years they have grown to 60 collection vehicles, 108 employees, operating the second largest recycling facility in the state, they operate the only privately held landfill in the state and they also run a compost facility. They've had a lot of growth and breadth of services to offer their customers. Asked about his corporate strategy, John tells us that Alpine has never been hesitant to invest heavily in innovation and that's been the key to their growth. Investing $4.5 million...watch and listen for more interesting ideas...
Related Links: Alpine Waste & Recycling || ACG Denver || M&A || Rocky Mountain Corporate Growth Conference || CoBiz Article Alpine || Video on YouTube || Keywords: John Griffith, Alpine Waste & Recycling, ACG, Denver, Leading Resilient Growth Rocky Mountain Corporate Growth Conference, Association for Corporate Growth, Emerging Corporate Growth Award -
Video, Watch: John Griffith, Ceo/Founder, Alpine Waste & Recycling

Early stage capital and other challenges for startups
1166_ 2/20/12 - While talking with David Moll, founder of the VC firm, Infield Capital, he offered ideas (based on challenging experiences) that are seldom addressed when people are raising capital for their new venture. David said, "If an agreement is important to somebody than do it right, do it with an attorney. It's important if it's a patent number one. It's important if it's an investment - that's what somebody is expecting a return on. It's important if it's an employee or their options or a customer. These things are all fundamental and can't be done on cocktail napkins or self-lawyered agreements. It is fundamental for entrepreneurs to take the necessary time and money and get these things built right the first time. It can save you a whole lot of heartache, a lot of money and in the end may actually save your company because the tragedy avoided... those are really heartbreaking stories in our space." He offers numerous examples. David brings up a number of other points. Here's the one. In a deal they did not do, where understandably an entrepreneur was doing everything he could do to stretch cash, he decided to file the IP, the patents around his invention, on his own, without council. And there is no greater travesty in David's mind, "because this was a fabulous invention, absolutely mind bending to see it and watch it work and understand it. But the reality is that when you file a patent - you've scrambled an egg that won't easily unscramble. Patents that are filed for and not granted, not continued become prior art and confuse the opportunity for you to ever file again in the space. Patents that aren't artfully authored can create real problems with ultimately trying to get protection for an invention. And, venture investors, as a category tend to be technology based investors taking a lot of risk and expecting that innovation is the thing that we have found that wouldn't happen somewhere else... So when something like that happens, it's really sad because it's too late to undo what's already been done. So, I know cash is always so precious, especially when it's your own and that of family and friends, and in the earliest of days it is hard to spend on pricey attorneys. But, if you were only going to spend it in one place..." Listen for more important ideas...
Related Links: Infield Capital || Venture Capital || Entrepreneur Channel || Blog || Keywords: David Moll, Infield Capital, Venture Capital, Angel Investors, Entrepreneurs, Early Stage, Patents, Legal Council, VC Firm - bytes=8428881
LISTEN TO: David Moll, Founder, Infield Capital

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When writing be Clear, Concise and Compelling
1160_ 2/13/12 - With the ubiquitous blog and posts on Facebook etc. Larry wondered about our writing skills. After all, we're sending and receiving important messages. We contacted Kirsten Nelson, founder of C3 Writing. Larry loves her tag line, Clear, Concise and Compelling. First thing he wanted to know was what were the most common mistakes made when people are trying to write their blogs, brochures, websites and whatever. What are the biggest mistakes? Kirsten said, the biggest and most common mistakes we make when we set out to write something regardless of what it is, internally we know what we want, we know that we want it to look good and we want it to say something. But we really need to dig deeper and ask ourselves some questions. When I sit down with people I ask them to look at, what is it that you want your writing to do? You're writing because there is an end-goal in mind, something you want to cause or affect, and you're using the power of your voice in a written format to reach that goal. If I'm not intentionally specific, if my client isn't intentionally specific about what they want to create, chances are the writing is not going to carry that impact. Equally important to that is who is going to be reading this writing. Who is your audience? We have to be really specific, I don't just mean 'my customers' - Who are your customers? What group or groups of people are we talking about? the reason this is so important is, we have a message we want to get out, how is that message going to be received? What's going to touch on the information my customer needs? What are the emotions that are important to them, the things they like to hear. Again, if you don't do that you're not going to reach the reader emotionally and you're not going to reach your goal. Kirsten also addresses; Being Specific, Knowing Your Intended Audience, Researching Your Industry, Planning Your Presentation, and of course, Being Clear, Concise and Compelling. Whether you are developing a new website, writing a proposal, creating a new ad or brochure, you'll want to listen this interview...
Related Links: C3 Writing Home || Clear, Concise, Compelling || Startup Colorado Public Launch || Blog || In the News Channel || Keywords: Kirsten Nelson, C3 Writing, Clear, Concise, Compelling, Blogs, Brochures, Websites, Written Format, Your Intended Audience, Your Industry, Your Presentation - bytes=6123000
LISTEN TO: Kirsten Nelson, Founder, C3 Writing

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The greatest challenge, close those deals, and it looks good
1162_ 2/13/12 - We are here at ACG Denver that's the Association for Corporate Growth and this month we're talking with Mike Gordon of Gordon Composites / Polystrand. Think economic recovery and you will understand that this audience is happy and excited to hear Mike today. Continuing in his father's entrepreneurial path, Mike, a second generation owner, is opening a new plant right here in Denver and his son will be running that plant. But wait until you hear, they are expanding a brand new thermo plastic composite business to a plant they're building in Centennial. One hundred and twenty-five thousand square feet with all new technology is coming to Denver. It is what they call a 'zero waste' plant. There is no waste - any production waste can be recycled and put into other products. Mike's son will be the vice president of operations at the new plant in Denver; he went to CU and also CSU - two degrees - so he's ready for his next assignment here. Currently he is running this part of the business in Montrose and will be expanding to his own plant here. Larry asked Mike what he thought the greatest challenges were for this year. Keeping his eye on the ball, Mike said, "The big challenge for us in this business is getting that plant going. It's a large expansion for our business, it's actually doubling the size of our business (square footage). We have a great demand for our new product. I think the greatest challenge is to close those deals and make sure that demand is there so we can meet our commitments that were made to build this plant. It looks very promising. We're opening that plant and it should be operating by August 1, 2012.
Related Links: Polystrand.com || Reinforced Plastics || ACG Denver || M&A Channel || Rocky Mountain Corporate Growth Conference || Keywords: Mike Gordon, Polystrand, Gordon Composites, Thermo Plastic Composite, Zero Waste Plant, ACG Rocky Mountain Capital Growth Conference - bytes=2812345
LISTEN TO: Mike Gordon, Gordon Composites/Polystrand

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Women and Leadership: How the Soft Stuff Can Lead to Hard Results
1160/RR_ 2/6/12 - ACG Denver 2012 Rocky Mountain Corporate Growth Conference is right around the corner - March 13 and 14th. Keynote Speaker - Carly Fiorina.
Her unparalleled record of hard work and success includes more than two decades at AT&T and Lucent Technologies, where she led the largest-of-its-time IPO of Lucent and became President of its largest business. In 1998, she was first named as Fortune magazine's most powerful female American executive and continued to top this list throughout her tenure at HP. Carly has led profound change and transition within her companies, and she will share her insights on how she was able to lead organizations that could capitalize on opportunities and always stay adaptable.
      This conference offers an opportunity to learn from some of our cultures great leaders. It certainly is exciting so at w3w3.com, we looked to past ACG Conferences and decided to share our experience of 2008 with the conference and speaker Colleen Abdoulah. Titled BUILD, BUY or SELL... The ACG Corporate Growth Conference exhibited a culture of innovation from the start... I loved the registration process; In a private room, spacey, organized, friendly and efficient! From there we ran the gauntlet of booths and industry leaders to a fine sit-down breakfast and the first morning keynote Colleen Abdoulah - WOW - blew our socks off! Energetic - enthusiastic - fun and funny, she approached her presentation with zeal and enthusiasm. Colleen asked, “What is leadership? It is bringing out the best in ourselves and others. Don’t tolerate bad behaviors from anyone, male or female.” The day continued with excellent panels, sparking creative, innovative, enthusiasm and a desire to get back into the action – glad the conference was interactive. Tidbit: How to determine the value of your business to others: Colleen says, 1) Consistent Improvement of Cash Flows; 2) Your Growth Story; 3) Capable Management Team; and 4) Solid performance history.
Related Links: 2012 Rocky Mountain Corporate Growth Conference || WOW Home Page || ACG Denver || M&A ACG Channel || Keywords: ACG Rocky Mountain Capital Growth Conference, Carly Fiorina, WOW, Colleen Abdoulah - bytes=25719016
LISTEN to Colleen Abdoulah, CEO/Chairman, WOW

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Understanding the State of the Markets
1163_ 2/20/12 - We're here at the offices of Capital Investment Management Company, or CIMCO as many of us know them, with Chris Pelley, Managing Director and Chad Williams, Managing Partner because they have some really important information to share. Chris and Chad are going to give us the State of the Markets. Chad says their goal is to educate us on some of the factors they've been watching lately. Larry said, "It has been a real roller-coaster ride for equities." Chad commented, " While we're still down 11.8% from the peak of the market in 2007' it makes us wonder if we're finished advancing, or if there is more to come. If we look at the factors affecting the stock market and the economy, we will break them up into two categorizes: headwinds and tailwinds. It goes without saying that Europe's debt crisis created significant headwinds last year, and it is unlikely that this problem is going away quickly. There has been no definitive solution to the crisis, and it is one we will be monitoring, though we do expect Europe to muddle through without creating major drag on the U.S. Economy." Chris added, "Employment is one factor that could be a headwind or tailwind, depending on how you look at it. Moody's Analytics expects the U.S, unemployment rate to remain above 8% through 2012. In its latest report, the Bureau of Labor Statistics stated the unemployment rate dropped to 8.5% in December, continuing the downward trend started in September. We truly hope this positive trend will continue. We do believe home prices have stabilized and that we have probably seen the worst of it, and will continue to monitor this situation going forward. The national deficit is projected to increase. The White House's own numbers show the national debt exceeding $26 trillion 10 years from now. Obviously, this is something that concerns us. Larry said, "Hopefully, it's not all bad news out there!" Chris pointed out, "There are some positive tailwinds propelling us forward. Our first tailwind is Optimism. In fact, nearly half of the investors are bullish on the stock market. That's well above the historical average. Americans have stronger household balance sheets. Right now, corporations are more profitable than they have been in over 40 years, which we believe will translate to increases in hiring and strong equity valuations. Analysis shows there is a favorable indication that this bull market is not out of steam yet and there is still potential for further economic expansion." Larry asked, "What are the experts predicting?" Chad replied, "Wall Street's top strategists forecast calls range from bold to conservative. Most" ...there's much more, listen now...
Related Links: 2012 State of the Markets PowerPoint || CIMCO || ACG Denver || Community Reach Channel || Social Entrepreneurship || Keywords: Chris Pelley, Chad Williams, Capital Investment Management Company, CIMCO, State of the Markets, Economy, Europe's Debt Crisis, S&P 500, Moody's Analytics, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Headwinds, Tailwinds, bytes=6980234
LISTEN TO: Chris Pelley & Chad Williams, State of the Markets

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Winner of the Outstanding Corporate Growth Award
1165_ 2/20/12 - Today we're talking about Leading Resilient Growth. We are here with a winner whose being honored at the upcoming Rocky Mountain Corporate Growth Conference. Schomp Automotive is receiving the Outstanding Corporate Growth Award at the conference, that is over $100M in annual sales. We here with Aaron Wallace, Owner of Schomp Automotive. We asked Aaron to tell us about their business. Aaron replied, "We are a family business, in the automotive industry - sales, service and parts. In May it will be our 71st year in business and we are fourth generation Colorado business, my great-grandfather, grandfather, mother and me and my siblings. Schomp is a Honda, BMW and Mini dealership. They also have nine lines of motorcycles - and that's who we are. When asked about corporate growth strategies for the next year, Aaron told us that they are focusing on the changes their customers have experienced in their lives. The customers behavior is different, they don't have as much time, they're busy and in between things. And people have more information, they're shopping online, when they come to the dealership we have to adjust to the changes the customer has made. Change is difficult." Larry asked, "With the turbulent economy we've experienced the past number of years, how do you prosper in times of uncertainty?" He said, "During the good times or bad times you have to know what you're doing is right. In the good times you can't do a bad job or make stupid decisions just because they're good times. You have to run during the good times knowing that..." Watch and listen for more...
Related Links: Schomp Automotive || ACG Denver || M&A || Rocky Mountain Corporate Growth Conference || CoBiz Article Schomp || Keywords: Aaron Wallace, Schomp Automotive, ACG, Denver, Leading Resilient Growth, Rocky Mountain Corporate Growth Conference, Association for Corporate Growth, Outstanding Corporate Growth Award,
Video Watch: Aaron Wallace, Owner, Schomp Automotive

Creator of open source mobile testing programs
1159_ 2/13/12 - You'll likely recognize this next Colorado Companies to Watch 2011-12 winner as we featured them on w3w3.com about six months ago. We're here again, with Stu Stern, CEO of Gorilla Logic and the creator of a couple of open source mobile testing programs. Stu tells us Gorilla Logic has two lines of business, the primary line of business is enterprise app development for web and mobile for large and small companies around the U.S. and our other line of business is around testing tools. They make some of the most widely used testing tools for mobile testing for android and IOS. They are open source, completely free and very, very popular. When Larry interviewed Stu six months ago, they'd just gone through a bunch of expansion, new development, upgrading and so much else. Surprise, surprise, there's more... They've just moved to Boulder, down on Pearl Street, Stu said, "which is something of a hotbed of local technology companies. It's nice to have lots of company, a thriving community, lots of collaboration among the various firms down here." With the space, they've built out quite an attractive design studio where customers can come in and work with Stu and his team to design web mobile applications. Additionally they've opened an office in New York City as well as an office in Bangalore, India where they're doing general enterprise application development and that is their testing center where they provide testing services for Gorilla Logic customers. (Debra Langer gave us a heads up.) They expanded their service offering QaaS, that is Quality as a Service, so in addition to the tools themselves, Gorilla Logic is now offering to use the tools on behalf of their customers, to automate testing of their systems, their mobile applications. And down in India they have telephone engineers that develop the tests and then run the tests on a continuous QA Cloud. So they're not only developing the tests but will run and manage that suite of tests on an ongoing basis - so it's a turnkey quality assurance for mobile testing. The w3w3 listener's may remember the FoneMoney App - Stu tells us they're just releasing FoneMonkey6 which is being renamed MonkeyTalk... they're setting the stage for testing more than just phones, and it is a major evolution of the product...there's much more, listen now...
Related Links: Gorilla Logic || FlexMonkey || FoneMonkey || CO Companies to Watch Channel || CO Companies to Watch Home || Keywords: Stu Stern, Gorilla Logic, FlexMonkey, FoneMonkey, Open Source, Rich Internet Applications, Source Code, Edward Lowe Foundation, Colorado Companies to Watch, Quality as a Service, Cloud - bytes=5023768
LISTEN TO: Stu Stern, CEO, Gorilla Logic

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A different way of looking at opportunities in business
1161_ 2/13/12 - We're looking at and talking about the Deming Center's unique approach. Immediately Paul Jerde hits us with a disclaimer... "You know, you're talking to somebody who thinks entrepreneurship is the answer to almost every question. It's fun to try it sometimes, how are we going to solve the challenges of poverty and economic development around the world? How are we going to address healthcare around the world? Entrepreneurs are going to do that and I could go on and on. But I find that people tend to narrowly define what entrepreneurship is and I've talked to you about the value of education in the context of higher education not only for business students but for engineers, technologists, for arts and humanities... but bottom line of all of this, realistically most of our students are going to need to get jobs in companies to get experience. So it's in our best interests, and best interest across the campus for companies to have a reason to be connected with what the university is doing. So we've done this around building industry sectors. And what we believe we do by teaching entrepreneurship to our students - they come out having graduated with an interest in finance or in marketing, operations, systems integration, whatever the skill set is, we add something which is an integrated way of looking at the way all the parts of the business work together. We think it's a differentiator for students, they’re willing to; when they go out, learn the lexicon of other areas of specialization even though they'll get a job in marketing or finance. So entrepreneurship is not just about starting companies, it's a set of tools. By doing that we find that companies are more interested in becoming engaged and connected through the things that we're doing in the school of business but broadly across campus. Because by developing relationships, they develop a reputation within the university. You know students don't read the websites of companies; they socially connect on which companies are great companies to go to work for. And this allows the companies to learn earlier, connect earlier with the best and brightest talent that we have, build relationships, and test them in internships, mentorships and other relationships. I like to say, we like to connect with companies that are entrepreneurial. That doesn't just mean they're startups, that have a strong local, regional presence but a national or international reach. Those are our target companies that are so good for us because it opens up a rich field of opportunities for students ...listen for more...
Related Links: Deming Center for Entrepreneurship || CU Technology Transfer Office || CU TTO Channel || TTO Blog || Award Photos || Keywords: Paul Jerde, Deming Center for Entrepreneurship, Leeds School of Business, Robert H. & Beverly A. Deming, Entrepreneurs, Teams, Developing Relationships, Companies - bytes=6069083
LISTEN TO: Paul Jerde, Executive Director, Deming Center for Entrepreneurship

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Achieving Your Personal and Professional Goals
933_ Don't Let Another Year Go By - The Ultimate Win is Yours
- Larry Nelson has taught this material in seminars in over a dozen countries, from China to Canada, from Norway to Australia, from Germany to Japan as well as throughout the USA. He shares the results of his international research about the Characteristics of an Achiever and then goes on to help you lay out your "personalized blueprint" to personal and professional success. Larry is an internationally published author, has been a consultant to many Fortune 1000 companies and is best known for his train-the-trainer programs. ...listen now a complete step-by-step program including a downloadable manual and resource guide...this is an in-depth strategic planning and goal setting system for achievers...Read More about how to Supercharge Your Business... The links below are valuable and extremely helpful to setting your course for the next year! And they're free.
Related Links: Ultimate Win Resources || Training Trends || 3-Filters Technology™ || Podcasting Directory || Your Goal || Keywords: Ultimate Win, Your Goal, Training Trends, 3-Filters TechnologyTM, Setting Goals, Larry Nelson; 11/29/10 Chnl: Entrepreneurs