This Friday's speaker at Denver IDEA Cafe Startup Workshop: Daniel Epstein, founder of The Unreasonable Institute (click here.)

The meeting is free and open to everyone who is starting in a new direction with their career, starting a new project or campaign, or starting a new business. RSVP to this and our other upcoming meetings at http://meetup.com/SBCC-Startup-Workshop

I attended the Boulder Denver New Tech Meetup last night. They do a fantastic job. It's worth the trip from Denver to attend in Boulder, and the Denver group is growing by leaps and bounds. Thanks to Robert for doing such a great job with this. For more see http://www.bdnewtech.com/

A new Franklin Circle Peer Advisory Group is forming now. If you'd like an invitation contact John Wren at (303)861-1447 or John@JohnWren.com

This life is short, let's get started!

This week at our Denver IDEA Cafe Startup Workshop we're trying something a little different. Instead of inviting a speaker, the first 12 to RSVP will get 2 to 3 minutes to share their favorite startup story or two. If this works, we'll be repeating it the last Friday of each month.
Those who have attended an IDEA Cafe before are especially encouraged to attend, the hope is that the last Friday of each month becomes a "reunion meeting" with those who've been helped by the group before returning to share what they have learned, and past speakers returning to share their "short form" startup story. Should be fun, hope you'll join us and please invite your friends who might find it helpful.

An RSVP is never required, but for more information and to let us know you'll be with us go to either http://meetup.com/Denver-IDEA-Cafe or on the link to the event that you'll find posted on http://Facebook.com/Small.Business.Chamber

Small Business Online 15-Minute Morning Show will now be just once a week, hope your join us this Friday (July 22) or any Friday morning at 10:30 a.m. Mountain Daylight Time, or watch the recording of the show anytime during the week, see the small blue line "Small Business Chamber" underneath the TV screen to the right.

Internet expert and entrepreneur Dave Taylor will be with us next Friday for our Denver IDEA Cafe Startup Workshop, should be a great meeting. More info and optional RSVP at http://Facebook.com/Small.Business.Chamber, or to guarantee a seat for yourself RSVP at http://Meetup.com/Denver-IDEA-Cafe

I'm reading a couple of great books that we'll be talking about on the SBCC Morning Show this week. Tim Harford's Why Success Always Starts with Failure, see his 3 minute video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KR_mCvb-KyY; and Wayne Rogers's (remember him from MASH?) Make Your Own Rules, see the Facebook Page.

We've started a new 15 minute online broadcast The Small Business Chamber Morning Show, see link to the right. It airs live each morning Monday thru Friday at 10:30 a.m. Mountain Daylight Time, 12:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. You can watch it anytime lin the link just below the color bars to the right.

If you have news about startup you'd like to have shared on the show, email the host/camera man/producer/one-man-band John Wren at John@JohnWren.com

We are recruiting Ambassadors to help us start new IDEA Cafe Startup Workshop in cooperation with local chambers across Colorado. Ambassadors will also encourage participation in the new online Colorado Business Directory & Almanac http://www.PioneerHQ.com. If you'd like to know more about being a Small Business Chamber/PioneerHQ.com Ambassador, contact John Wren at (303)861-1447 or John@JohnWren.com

Our Friday Denver IDEA Cafe Startup Workshop is now the "beginners meeting" for your new, free Small Business Chamber of Commerce. To participate, click on the meetup.com link to it on the right of this page, or see the link on our Facebook Page http://Facebook.com/Small.Business.Chamber

This life is short, let's get started!

From John Wren's Daring Mighty Things-- The Simplest Way to Start Your First (or Next) New Business, endorse by Dr. Amar Bhide http://bhide.net. For a link to a free copy of the entire book, email John@JohnWren.com or call (303)861-1447.

The world will always have government, big-business, and big-labor: government for those things individuals cannot do for themselves and big-business and big-labor because of certain efficiencies of scale.

Unfortunately, the large scale of these three forms of bureaucratic operations leads to problems:

1) Efficiency comes at the expense of intelligence and creativity. The large organization has a tendency to get better and better at doing what eventually is the wrong thing.

2) Power corrupts. Governmental corruption is kept in check by our process of representative democracy. Big-business corruption is kept in check to the extent that the free market is allowed to operate. That is why big business hates competition.

The world view of the bureaucrat is necessarily different from that of the entrepreneur. The steps recommended here for starting a new business will not make sense to most bureaucrats.

If you decide to work with a business mentor, it is important that you work with someone who subscribes to the following philosophy of business. This person almost always will be an independent business owner.

Beware of seminars about how to start a new business; the most deadly advice for entrepreneurs comes from bureaucrats, public or private, active or retired.

Yes, the world really does need you to create a new business!

There is always a shortage of entrepreneurs, that's why it pays so well. This shortage of start-up specialists is caused by two things:

1) The infinite power of the human mind to create new ways to help people; and

2) People's unlimited need for help. Read today's newspaper. It's easy to see the world needs help. To the entrepreneur, these problems are opportunities in working clothes!

From "Daring Mighty Things-The Simplest Way to Start Your First (or Next) New Business by John S. Wren, MBA+, available on Amazon.com. Wren is a Denver business consultant and founder of the new Small Business Chamber of Commerce. For more see www.JohnWren.com or the Small Business Chamber Facebook Page. Contact Wren at (303)861-1447 or John@JohnWren.com

The Denver Post reports today (click here) on a new Colorado governement effort to boost startups.

Here's the comment I just posted:

If formal planning and market research worked as well as the Small Business Administration, SCORE, SBDCs, and the academics their money and power have influenced think, we'd have a planned economy, not a market economy.

The big problem is that we have set up government programs to snuff out the entreprenurial spirit in America.

Local chambers of commerce, trade associations, and other ways business owners and entrepreneurs gather can do a lot of good. But the SBA/SCORE/SBDC cancer should be cut out, in my opinion.

Maybe a group like this can take a step back and see this very real problem.

John S. Wren, MBA+
Founder, Small Business Chamber of Commerce
IDEA Cafe Startup Workshops * Franklin Circle Peer Advisory Groups
See our Facebook Page: Small Business Chamber

(MBA is a warning. The + means I'm a recovering MBA, that much of what I learned in graduate business school I've had to overcome to be truely helpful to people who what to start something new. Does that mean I have all the answers? No, just the opposite. Again, it's a warning in the interest of full disclosure and transparency.)

In today's Denver Post:

Denver IDEA Cafe Startup Workshop, a free weekly meeting for aspiring
entrepreneurs and others looking at a career change. This week's workshop
will feature Karl Dakin speaking on the topic, "My startup experience and how
I found my new job with Regis University as executive director of the John J.
Sullivan Endowed Chair for Free Enterprise." To be held at Panera Bread,
1330 Grant St., Denver. More info: SBCcBlog.com

For optional RSVP go to our Denver Small Business Chamber Facebook Group
or click on the link to the right for our meetup.com site. Of course, no RSVP is
every required, but it does help us plan.

This should be a very interesting meeting, hope you can join us if you are starting
in a new direction, and please email a link to this site to your friends who have
recently lost a job, had a bright idea, or for any other reason might find it helpful.