Discussing the benefits of social business enterprise
1136 1.2.12 - Behind the scene with a candid moment, Kim Jordan, CEO/Founder, New Belgium Brewing, Chris Pelley, Managing Director/Founder, CIMCO and Larry Nelson of w3w3.com discuss the benefits of social business enterprise. We get an update on Roisin Pelley's work in India and much to Kim's delight, Larry confesses to his love for Fat Tire. We're off to a good start. Of course, Chris Pelley is the leader in our region, in fact, our state in the area of social enterprise/entrepreneurship and we're grateful he's brought Kim Jordan's company New Belgium Brewing Company to our attention. How could you not want to work there? When you hear Kim talk about her people, the teams and the culture - it's a great lesson for new entrepreneurs, but also for established older companies. Kim's response was, "I'm always impressed by my 'co-workers'. Sometimes they make me cry because they're so dedicated, creative and playful. I still have many pinch me moments." Twice a year New Belgium Brewing has their 'New Owner Induction" that's when you've passed the mark for being one year vested for the employee stock ownership plan, they have a ceremony and Kim makes a Mojo for every person who is in that six month time frame. People say it's their favorite day of the year because of the enthusiasm from the new owners about why this is important to them. First year anniversary, employees are presented with a bicycle and at the fifth year, Kim, takes them to Belgium for a week, traveling around and learning about beer culture. Their annual retreat has been very powerful because it creates a level of trust and transparency and also an expectation that people be involved. There's much more detail about tapping into your people's strengths... Watch and Listen Now.
RELATED LINKS: New Belgium || About || CIMCO || Community Reach || Social Entrepreneurship || M&A Channel || KEYWORDS:Kim Jordan, New Belgium Brewing, Social Entrepreneurship, Social Enterprise, Association for Corporate Growth, Denver, ACG, Chris Pelley, CIMCO, Community Reach

Expanding Colorado's High Speed Internet Service

1380_ 4/29/13 - w3w3® Media Network looks forward to the annual Colorado Rotary state of the state reception at the Governor's mansion in Denver because they always have an important and valuable project to share with us. This year we're speaking with three people working on the Colorado High Speed Internet Project. Harriet Downer has a consulting firm Logical Connections, she is here in the capacity of Chair of the Colorado High Speed Internet Project along with Seth Patterson, president of the Rotary Club of Denver [and commercial real estate partner]. John Klug, the third member of our trio, says he's never worked harder and never made less - but he spends about half his time on Rotary which excites him so much, and that's his story. Seth is convinced the most important thing he can be involved in is education because it leverages everything else and ultimately should provide a solution to every other problem. John Klug, said, "We looked out a couple of years ago and we saw that Colorado was forty-sixth in the nation in terms of internet speed and was paying 10 - 15 times the cost that our neighbor states of Nebraska and Utah were paying." The Eagle Net (Educational Access Gateway Learning Environment Network) Project is part of the solution - it's the middle mile. Beyond that there's a need to connect all the classroom buildings, a need for technology in classrooms, digital content and we need to train teachers how to use this. That's really the next phase of the project. Our plan is to mobilize all of Rotary in Colorado as well as other service clubs. The problem and the need is big enough. To engage with local school districts learn and help them determine the needs and then help meet those. Larry asked what individuals and businesses can do to help. "Keep the conversation going. We have 21 months to get this done - August 2013. And this is an interstate system - without the connection into the community, it's an interstate without entrances and exits. It's the community that will take it from the school district building into the classrooms that empower the communities and that's our charge. This will impact every home and business by providing gigabyte access to every part of the Colorado." Get involved, there's more to listen to...
RELATED LINKS: EAGLE – Net Project || Rotary Club of Denver, Club 31 || Rotary District 5450 || In the News|| KEYWORDS: EAGLE – Net, Rotary, High-speed Internet, Harriet Downer, Seth Patterson, John Klug, Federal Stimulus Grant, Colorado, School Districts, Colorado High Speed Internet Project, bytes=7309586
LISTEN TO: Rotary Colorado - High Speed Internet Project

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Employees are being called upon to become caregivers
1379_ 4/22/13 - One of the biggest challenges for companies today is that employees are increasingly being called upon to become caregivers for elderly and/or ill relatives. Almost 66 million Americans, or one in every four, is a caregiver and it is estimated that over 16 million people in the U.S. who serve as primary caregivers are also employed full time. The cost to their employers in terms of absenteeism, lost productivity and turnover is estimated at over $30 billion annually. We are speaking with Debby Henkens, director of business development for IngeniumCare, a health IT company that develops advanced technology solutions to help individuals with health concerns living at home or in facilities to be as safe and independent as possible. Many Americans with health issues, whether they are elderly, have a chronic illness, disability, or other condition, need help staying connected to their family and caregivers. The impact on businesses is likely to increase as several population and health trends converge. Every day, approximately 10,000 Baby Boomers are turning 65, with a total cohort of 75 million people. The incidence of Alzheimer’s Disease increases with age and as many as 50% of individuals over age 85 may develop the disease. People are living longer with more chronic illnesses and due to the healthcare funding crisis, there is more pressure to provide healthcare services in the home. All of this adds up to more employees being actively involved with care giving, which can be physically and emotionally exhausting. Long-distance care giving, a situation many adult children find themselves in, can be extremely stressful and take a great deal of time away from work. One of the biggest opportunities for companies today is to support their employees who are care givers so that they maintain their productivity, energy, and creativity. Companies that do this will build employee loyalty, reduce healthcare costs if they are self-insured, and attract talented new employees who appreciate these benefits...there is more great advice...
RELATED LINKS: Ingeniumcare Info || TiE Rockies || Innovation Pavilion || Software Channel || KEYWORDS: Debby Henkens, IngeniumCare, Health IT Company, CareGivers, CareGo Connected Care, TiE Rockies, Innovation Pavilion, Software bytes=7022866
LISTEN TO: Debby Henkens, IngeniumCare

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Helping existing businesses grow and expand
1180_ 3/19/12 - We're talking to a very popular guy, he works for the Governor's Office of Economic Development and International Trade as a relationship manager. That means he primarily works in business retention and expansion, helping existing businesses grow and expand their businesses, but also working to keep businesses here in the State of Colorado. In addition to this, Sam Bailey is also the program director for Colorado Companies to Watch. Sam says they're really the sales team for the State of Colorado, selling Colorado, promoting and really making this a great place not just to live and play, but also to conduct business. Larry asked, "Sam you run into and see all different kinds of businesses not only with CCTW, but obviously with OEDIT. With all the things we've been through in the last couple of years, can you give us a handle on the challenges businesses might be facing this coming year?" Sam pointed out, "One of the big issues that we're seeing is access to capital. Companies want to grow, but they are really looking for that backing to help them grow, grants, small business loans, venture capital. Banks are still at that point where they're still evaluating the risks, are not lending as much as they used to. So companies are really struggling to find that liquidity or access to capital to help expand, make capital investments in their company, acquire new equipment - So that's one issue that we've seen. Another issue is workforce, and that's throughout the state. Issue that there is a skills mismatch. We've got jobs here in the state, but having a trained, skilled workforce to fill those jobs is hard. So we're working with local institutions, higher education, community colleges, other industry associations to identify how can we be better at training our workers here in the state of Colorado so they can fill those positions with workers here in the state. Sam described the focus of Colorado Companies to Watch. "We're focused on second stage companies. In Colorado these are privately held, headquartered in Colorado, have between six to 99 employees, and have revenues between $750k to $50M. These are full startup companies, so they're really set to take off. The reason we focus on these companies is they make up roughly 8% of Colorado's economy, yet they account for almost 35% of all the jobs created." There's more...
Related Links: Colorado Companies to Watch || Colorado Companies to Watch Channel || PodCast Directory || Colorado OEDIT || Keywords: Sam Bailey, Colorado Companies to Watch, Office of Economic Development and International Trade, Edward Lowe Foundation, COCTW, Nominate, Second Stage Companies - bytes=5377779
LISTEN TO: Sam Bailey, Program Director, Colorado Companies To Watch

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PSA: Associations: Use this Business Community Calendar
1/2/2012 - ... to list your special events and monthly meetings…it is FREE! *** Does your organization have a Special Event that should be listed on the “w3w3 Calendar & Coming Events” Portal? This page can help your organization in planning and avoiding conflicting dates with other organizations. This is a Collaboration tool to enhance your effectiveness. If your organization has regular monthly meetings we invite you to submit them for posting on our Web Community Calendar (FREE). Plan successful events in the future that won't conflict with others: SUBMIT Your Event Dates – for the entire 2013 Year! - w3w3® Web Calendar Serves Colorado - Launched in 2005
LISTEN TO: Larry and Pat Nelson

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Teach for America or a Peace Corps for Geeks
1/2/12 - The National Center for Women In Technology (NCWIT) is very proud to bring the stories of incredible you women to your attention. We are talking with Jennifer Pahlka, founder of Code for America. She recently described Code for America, "It's like a Teach for America or a Peace Corps for Geeks". People in government, senior managers with projects they think could benefit from web based solutions can make an appeal to Code for America to get volunteer help to build these projects out. This is not the first thing Jennifer has done, she's a serial entrepreneur and has extensive experience in gaming and media. Jennifer says they're a new organization having just finished up their first fellowship year. They had 19 fellows work with them all year long and work with the cities doing great projects. An example of one project is the "Adopt a Fire Hydrant App", which came out of the fact that fellows go visit their cities for five weeks. Their Boston team was treated to a massive 'snowpocalypse' and they saw the city struggling to clear the streets. They never really get to digging out the fire hydrants, but the citizens were right in front of them and they could dig them out. So the 'fellows' created a little web app that allowed the citizen to clean the fire hydrant and agree to dig it out when it snows. Jennifer's advice to a budding entrepreneur: You have to really care, deeply care about the problem you're trying to solve and think it's an important problem. And care about your people. If you don't deeply care about your work others won't either and you won't be successful. Jennifer didn't feel like an entrepreneur until she came up with the idea for Code for America. She suddenly felt she could be incredibly useful to the world and she could make a difference and it was the power of the idea and the notion that no one else was going to do it that made her start this organization. Listen for more...
RELATED LINKS: Code for America || NCWIT Home || NCWIT Blog || Heroes Channel || KEYWORDS: Jennifer Pahlka, Code for America, National Center for Women In Technology, NCWIT, Lucinda Sanders, Geeks, Entrepreneurs, People in Government, Apps, bytes=16827353
LISTEN TO: Jennifer Pahlka, Code for America

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Hot new trends in marketing your company
1137_ 1/2/12 - The demand for marketing and marketing projects all the way through to individual marketers became so high that she launched this new brand from i2i Workforce, called Crazy Good Marketing. "It's a full service marketing firm with a twist", says founder, Melodie Reagan. Larry asked Melodie with all the hot new trends, how do we stay ahead? Melodie replied, “Well you stay ahead of the trends by paying attention to them. There is one that I'd like to share, because I think it will be impactful. I'm referring to one that started in Europe and bring it back to America. There's a firm called Iconoculture, they've identified a macro trend. It's called "National Gross Happiness. Why it relates to America? There are some trends going on in America in our markets and they're called 'Random Acts of Kindness', generosity and cause with a fact and fundamentally what this trend is about is political and economic uncertainty are putting a spotlight on how we feel and about our happiness and can we make a difference." Listen for more details. Melody goes on, "The Kern Organization completes an annual study of top marketing executives and for 2011 the number one trend that they pointed out is better integration of online and offline data collection and analytics is essential. It is essential and needs to be measurable for marketing. In terms of the online to offline, it really is about your market. Social media is important; it's about interaction - engaging with your prospects and your customers. At a minimum, any business today needs a website, and they need to get into LinkedIn and setup a page. What they do beyond that really and truly depends upon the market. If you're in a real high-end, face-to-face sell, all the social media isn't as critical - but again, Melodie says she's going to tell you website and LinkedIn. If you're selling to consumers - mobile, location based is very critical. We now have more and more smart phones. The other thing Melodie states with reaching various customers, for example w3w3.com, you provide a mechanism to reach businesses in Colorado. Very simply do things where you're getting an interaction with interviews or blogs with w3w3..." Listen for more insightful ideas...
RELATED LINKS: i2i Workforce || Colorado Companies to Watch || In the News || Podcasting Directory || CO Companies to Watch || w3w3® Blog || KEYWORDS:Melodie Reagan, CrazyGoodMarketing, i2iWorkforce, Colorado Companies to Watch, Talent Strategy, Recruiting, Jobs, Unemployment, Manpower, Training, Iconoculture, Kern Organization, bytes=7159539
LISTEN TO: Melodie Reagan, Founder/CEO Crazy Good Marketing

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Straight Talk about the Ups and Downs of the Coming Market
1378_ 4/22/13 - At the 'Straight Talk' Luncheon Series, program last week, Chris Pelley, CEO & Managing Director of Capital Investment Management (CIMCO) introduced an old friend and today's keynote speaker, Mike Robertson, 'an experienced investment advisor'. Chris says, "Mike wants to share his wisdom and advice gathered over the years - he enjoys complex problem solving and helping people see there are better ways of doing things." Mike's radio show has been very successful in Texas for the past few years - they're now opening up in Denver, broadcasting weekdays from 7:00am to 8:00am on Denver radio, AM-1060 on your dial. Larry was really interested and surprised at some of the things Mike talked about that maybe coming up in this year and in the next few years... Robertson said, "Well, I'm really happy, like everyone, that we've done so well these last couple of years. You roll back the clock and talk to somebody about this time in 2009 - the market was just beginning to turn around. We'd gone through a devastating loss, the market was off by 57% and people were really depressed. Okay, it's recovered now. One of the things that's great about Americans is we wake up in the morning ready to conquer the world, but we also tend to forget history a little bit. So my concern now is that people are not preparing for the next time it's going to happen. I can't say when it's going to happen, the pull back in the market - There will be a pull back. How deep will it be? Who knows. Obviously we've done very well, we've come back a very long way. We have some systemic problems in the U.S. - We have way too much debt. We've got interest rates at zero, you have people that are investing in investments like stocks that have never been there before. There are people that literally used to invest in CDs that could get 7 - 8 - 10% on their CDs... they're actually going to invest in stocks now because that's the only place they can get in." The bond market? Your interest rates are practically zero - they peaked on September 30th of 1981 - interest rates have been dropping since that time. They've pretty well hit the floor now and there is really only one way to go now. They can stay where they are now, at zero. Or, they're going to go down in price as interest rates rise - at some point interest rates will rise... that's just the way it is, everything goes in cycles. The important thing to remember is to prepare for those cycles in advance. Mike's favorite quote, by John F. Kennedy, 'The best time to prepare the roof is when the sun is shining.' ...listen for more valuable information...
Chris Pelly, Capital Investment Management, Securities offered through First Allied Securities, Inc. A Registered Broker/Dealer (Member FINRA/SiPC) Advisory services offered through First Allied Advisory Services Inc., A Registered Investment Advisor. Mike Robertson, Robertson Wealth Management, Securities offered through First Allied Securities, Inc. A Registered Broker/Dealer (Member FINRA/SiPC) Advisory services offered through First Allied Advisory Services Inc., A Registered Investment Advisor
RELATED LINKS: CIMCO || Community Reach || Social Entrepreneurs || Straight Talk Event Photos || KEYWORDS: Mike Robertson, Wealth Creation, Chris Pelley, Capital Investment Management, CIMCO, Straight Talk, Jeffrey Hartmann, CDs, Bonds, Interest Rates, John F. Kennedy, Ben Bernanke, Federal Debt, bytes=5868119
LISTEN TO: Mike Robertson, Robertson Wealth

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Jason Mendelson, VC Investments, Glue and Community
1221_ 6/11/12 - Sometimes, a person can really surprise you. We're talking with the very serious, local business mogul, JD, part-time professor, volunteer, and very busy telephone personality, Jason Mendelson, founder of the Foundry Group here in Boulder, Colorado. You will have to listen to this interview to understand that opening and it will be worth your time. We're at the Glue conference and Jason said, "You know it's just such a great conference. It's all these companies that the average person is never going to know exists - but if they didn't exist their entire Internet world would fall apart. It's just amazing looking at all these things; they're making other people's lives easier. In fact, most of these companies are making developer's lives easier. There are companies like Cloudabilty, for instance. Today you've got a developer with a dozen spread sheets just trying to manage their web architecture across the cloud. So one service does it all. You can see everything, how much your paying, what the loads are, and from one dashboard, see everything that's going on in your company. Or other companies, one of our new investments, a company called SendGrid, a very gluey company in our world. Jason puts a lot of time into volunteering with CU and other organizations; we asked what he was looking at today. "Well from a volunteer standpoint he is still very much into the Silicon Flatirons and what they're doing at the University of Colorado. Our buddies Phil Weiser, Brad Bernthal and Paul Ohm who has now taken a temporary position with the FTC - 'privacy god', these guys are just unbelievable. It's not just what they're doing for the students, but what they're doing for the community. Jason and his partner Brad Feld are coming out with a second edition of their book, Venture Deals which will be geared toward students. Starting even earlier in the process to help students have a view into what entrepreneurism and venture capital looks like. Then on the other hand, TechStars, that is one of the hubs of our community here and rapidly spreading across the nation. Spending time with these young, awesome entrepreneurs and really trying to help them accelerate their business. Don't miss Jason Mendelson and partner Ryan McIntyre at the Fox Theatre, August 25th, for their Album Release Party
Related Links: Foundry Group || Mendelson's Musings || TechStars || Glue 2013 || Defrag and Blur || Software Channel || Keywords: Jason Mendelson, Foundry Group, Venture Capital, GlueCon, Brad Feld, Ryan McIntyre, Cloudabilty, SendGrid, Picasso, Photobucket, Facebook, Cloud, bytes=4498393
LISTEN TO: Jason Mendelson, Managing Director, Foundry Group

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Mastering Change in the Midst of Chaos™1307_ 11/12/12 -

Here’s what you’ll learn in this 200 page book!
     - Apply the Principles of A-to-Z Planning to
        Build a Winning Team
     - Tap into Your Team’s Mental DNA to
        Increase Performance
     - Understand Your Sector’s
        History, Trends & Ground Swell

Regardless of the economy, application of these 3 initiatives will help you achieve your goals, meet your bottom-line metrics and accomplish incredible results. These 3 initiatives are Powerful, Proven and People-Oriented. Larry predicts there will be more significant changes in 2013 than in the last 10 years combined…across all sectors. Read More at Mastering Change .

Order now… It’s yours for $10.00 and we’ll pay the shipping in the US… (last chance - free shipping)