The (Club E) Show Must Go On...

Last night was supposed to be one of our typical Club E Tempe events, which had been going on monthly since February 2007...or so we thought. Our guest speaker, the venerable Francine Hardaway, local Phoenix entrepeneurial icon and my good friend, was expected shortly and the gang arrived at our Pur Vine Winery location in Tempe early, as we always try to do in order to facilitate the set up.

I arrived a little later than I usually did and was surprised to see a couple of dozen people milling about outside our location and our emcee and Club E insider, Chance Carpenter across the parking lot in a little cul de sac area with his sound equipment. What was up here tonight(?), I asked myself and I soon received the answer.

Pur Vine's doors were shut tight and no one answered our knocks or calls to the emergency number posted on the door. Here we were in the "glorious" Phoenix summer heat, outside with an expected turnout of our usual 75-100 Club E members anxious to hear our dear friend speak to us and we had no venue. What do we do? Unfortunately, this had happened to Club E before in the unexpected demise of our Phoenix Club E meeting venues first at 7th Heaven Eatery and then Nixons...both establishments had shut their doors without warning because of escalating costs and a marked downtrend in customers. Was this happening yet again at our Tempe location????

Well, good old Chance had taken it upon himself to locate an electric outlet across the parking lot,hooked up his sound system and was motioning to everyone milling about to sit on the few benches and water fountain stoop around the cul de sac. It was a little warm, sure, and maybe it wasn't the ideal venue for our Club E event but guess what(?) it worked just fine!

Francine demurred at being outside, so we quickly agreed to reschedule her talk at a future Club E meeting and Chance masterfully led the group in a roundrobin discussion of each others' busineses and brought out our attendees' hopes and needs by passing around the mike after sharing our Club E announcements and other news, like the eFactory launch at our Club E headquarters at our Rose Garden site in N. Phoenix.

Our very first eFactory tenant was in the audience and Frank Lupo of Premier Credit spoke very positively of his experience as an eFactory pioneer and encouraged others in the audience to come check us out and move in themseves. He even brought up a recent news article in which our friends at the Phoenix Business Journal featured his business and new tenancy at the eFactory and the leads from readers were already starting to come in for him from the exposure. It was very heartwarming to hear of his positive experience and enthusiasm for our newly launched eFactory project and we thank him!

Thirty five or fourty brave Club E souls spent the next hour and a half or more, sharing their experiences and line of entrepreneurial work on the mike as it was passed around and I stood there absolutely amazed at the range of diversity and spirit of optimism that pervaded our little band of entrepreneurs. It dawned on my then and there that despite the doom and gloom of our media's reporting of the financial chaos and meltdown of America's once proud economy...there was hope and it rested firmly on the shoulders of entrepreneurs like the group before me last night.

These folks, discounting the escalating crises around us, firmly made plans to launch or even expand their little and not-so-little businesess and it made me proud to hear the determination and optimism in their voices. After the intros were over, bands of fellow entrepreneurs made their way over to others to suggest possible alliances, ask questions and make plans to meet each other again. That's what it's all about and that is exactly what Club E was created for in the first place.

I saw some familiar faces that I hadn't seen in awhile like the Home Shopping Network maven Kim Babjak, who I hadn't seen in the year since she was our featured speaker at a Club E Tempe event herself. She shared that she's been observing Club E's massive growth and dearly wanted to reach out to our membership to champion their inventions and products that she could take to market through her time-tested channels. I invited her to tour our office to map out a strategy with us to do just that.

Sarit Kommineni and Richard Otto were there and after Sarit shared his story on the state-of-the-art online education delivery platform that he is bringing to the U.S. from his native India...through our Institute for Entrepreneurship platform. Richard, Sarit and I then set up a meeting together for the next couple of days to discuss yet an other entrepreneurial opportunity that was offered to me just yessterday...

A new face there last night was Gregg Drennan of the Start Up Weekend gang. This very cool concept has been successfully launched across the country and features a weekend of collaboration and cooperation between all ranges of entrepreneurs and support providers (accountants, lawyers, etc.) who converge for an intense weekend to actually start brand new enterprises. Talk about a match made in heaven for Club E and our eFactory! Sean Tierney, one of Club E's own and uber-software entrepreneur, had facilitated this intro and Gregg was reaching out to see if Club E could support their upcoming October 17th-19th Phoenix Start-Up weekend...even offering Club E members FREE admission! Here's exactly what Gregg said to me in an email this morning...

Hi Peter,

Thanks very much for inviting me to the meeting tonight... it was great to hear all the people about ideas for business that they have or want to start.

I also mentioned a discount for our weekend so wanted to provide a link (http://phoenixstartupweekend.eventbrite.com/?discount=clube) that you can put in the members area for interested people to register for the Phoenix Startup Weekend and it will automatically apply a 100% discount for the registration fee.

Please feel free to encourage as many interested people you encounter to use this link to sign up and come out an be a part of our weekend. If you run into any legal or financial/accountant folks we really could use a few more of them.

At this point we think we can handle another 60 people or so before we start sharing seats so please pass the word.

Also, please let me know if you do a posting or blog about the Phoenix Startup Weekend and send me a link for it and I'll make sure it gets posted on our website. Just in case, I've attached our logo file below.

Just some basic info:

Starts: Friday, Oct 17, 2008 at 6:00 PM
Ends: Sunday, Oct 19, 2008 about 8:00 PM
Location: Gangplank HQ Offices
325 E Elliott Rd, Suite 34
Chandler, AZ 85225
All food and beverages for the weekend will be provided. Bring your ideas and a notepad and prepare for one of the most energizing weekends you'll ever experience.

Thanks again and I'll call you in the next couple of days to arrange that tour,

Gregg Drennan
602-570-3422 (Cell)

Now, I'm going for sure and I'm also going to reach out to a couple of bright CPA-type and attorneys that are part of the Club E Family to join us all and bring their expertise to the group that will be attending. My hunch is that it will be a terrific experience for all, especially Club E members and who knows(?) maybe the eFactory will get some great new start-up tenants out of the weekend's new launches!
Everyone in the Phoenix-area that sees this...contact Gregg and sign up as participants for the upcoming Start-Up Weekend and make sure you tell him that Club E sent you, so you can share in his generous offer.

Now later in the evening, I did heard from both the owner of Pur Vine and his much chagrined staff about the mix up on not scheduling our event because it "wasn't in their appointment book." The good news is that Pur Vine is not yet another fatality from our faltering economy and we are thankful for that and the past patronage that they offered as our Tempe venue. We will gladly continue to work with Pur Vine and their wonderful staff in the future and are happy that Club E could salvage and make the best of the little bump in the road last night.

After all, we're entrepreneurs and that's what we do...improvise and make it work!


Best to all,

Peter J. Burns, II
Founder
Club Entrepreneur (www.clubenetwork.com)
Institute for Entrepreneurship (www.instituteforentrepreneurship.com)
eFactory (www.clubefactory.com)