The sky is falling....IT IS NOT!

I just received a stirring email from one of my former Barrett Honors College (ASU) students, who is now working with me and the "inner circle" of Club E to launch the eFactory. Today, the stock market crashed like never before and "conventional wisdom," (an oxymoron if ever there was one!) has people fretting away and preparing to jump off the nearest cliff.

What my 21 year old former student saw better than any politician or so-called economic expert is that our current melt down calls for a complete paradigm shift, where it is the responsibilty of the "E(ntrepreneur) Class" to re-educate all of the newly displaced. This education consists of teaching self-reliance through offering courses in entrepreneurial skills...which are woefully lacking in the traditional educational mode. Now that the "big lie" of Corporate America has been uncovered, much like the curtain being pulled back by Toto in the Wizard of Oz, the future of America rests solely on the spirit of ingenuity that lives in the soul of the entrepreneur.

See below what my former student had to say about how our little group can make a difference here in Phoenix...


Hi everyone,

Just to warn you, this is an intense email!!

My opinion is that tonight, we spread the news about what we are doing and draw some national attention to our platform. We should also create a plan to sell to the City of Phoenix. I feel like the credit crisis is Hurricane Katrina and our organization is FEMA. Let’s put together a really great plan for the City tomorrow.

Firstly, I think it would be great if all of us wrote blogs about the current crisis and how we are planning to help curb the anxiety of the US economy. If we can shed some positive light on these people who are panicking about their investments and their jobs, I feel that we will get a lot more traction with the things we are doing. Maybe even be pulled up on CNN or MSNBC? I know that’s kind of far- fetched but the fact is, we have a very pertinent message that people need to hear. We have a mission that is extremely powerful and can really turn around the economy.

Another piece is that people are Scared SHITLESS about their investments in the stockmarkets, in the banks, everywhere. If we can have a national push for what we are doing, people may come out of the woodworks to put a few million into our projects.

My thoughts that we can bring to the table for Phoenix:

1) immediately start a Entrepreneurship certificate that is run through our facility. I’m sure that we can plug people in to teach the courses that are already outlined in the IFE proposals. They come up with the curriculum. I don’t think we need to worry about any accreditation issues right now, what is pertinent is getting a grasp of how to start your own business and QUICK.

2) We need money to pay the teachers and to run the program. If the city is willing to give us an emergency grant to start us off so we can begin immediately, this would be huge. There is a sense of urgency and I think that the City of Phoenix is just as worried about the jobs as the citizens are. If the economy isn’t bustling, their budgets get cut and they can’t provide city services. If they can invest a little bit in us and let us do what we know how to do, we can really help Phoenix become an acropolis of entrepreneurial and economic activity.

3) We need to partner with a mentoring program- SCORE, etc to provide support for the newly displaced. If we can get Victory on board, that would be great

4) we need to put together publications to send out to employers who are laying people off and to city programs who are in charge of helping out the newly unemployed. The city can help us greatly on this but if we can get a press release put together to send to the local newspapers, that would be fantastic.

I know I sound like I’m getting way ahead of myself but I don’t want to waste any time while the House is bickering and doing nothing. We can do something and we have the connections to do so.

What are your thoughts?


Heather Watkins eFactory
VP of Operations
2625 E. Rose Garden Lane Phoenix, AZ 85050

As they say...."out of the mouth of babes..."

Best always,

Peter J. Burns, III

"Ready, Fire, Aim....Again!"

Seeing a dream that started only a couple of months ago to come to fruition is an amazing experience. Tonight that's exactly what happened. In a small office space in a larger facility of 10,000' which was temporary headquarters for Club E (www.clubenetwork.com) the entrepreneurs organization that I started with a handful of my students from a class I taught a couple of years ago, I rehashed an idea that I had put together with a friend some four years earlier.

That idea was the "Entrepreneur Factory," and it was originally conceived by a former buddy and me to take "functionally obsolescent" hotels in inner cities and revamp them into incubators for start-ups, using the hotel rooms as the start-ups' offices and the common area for entrepreneurial support. We never did get around to actually actuating that idea but I dusted off the plan and rewrote it with a different twist this time, while I was sitting in my temporary office a couple of months or so.

I had lunch with our landlord and proudly demonstrated how we could take members of Club E's organization, which now topped at over 3000 local business owners in multiple Valley (and beyond) chapters and fill the now empty commercial building that the landlord was sitting on. There's a lot of that around these days with vacancy rates in commercial buildings topping 30%-40% in many metropolitan cities and Phoenix was no exception. When I shared that he'd have to spend some money to upgrade his older building with amenities and features that would make the building suitable for an eFactory, he foolishly balked.

I took my crew from Club E and moved out shortly after because what was the use of trying to work with a landlord that just didn't "get it?" His building sits empty today and probably will for the forseeable future until he gets tired paying the mortgage on a long empty space and the bank takes it back.

One of Club E's fellow members, hearing my plan to create the eFactory called me up excitedly to share that a friend of his had a state-of-the-art building that had been created with exactly what my vision for the eFactory had been in my plan...only better. I visited the site and was knocked over by the sheer magnitude of 15,000' of the nicest building I have ever seen. It turns out that the visionary that owns the building spend some $5MM in creating this incredible facility and now was looking for someone to do something with it. I gladly volunteered!

We put a deal together and Club E had a brand new headquarters plus a prototype for its eFactory rollout. Along the way, word got out in the local press that Club E was looking for a site for an eFactory and I was approached by three dozen developers, one of whom, Green Street Properties, knocked out a sweeping deal to build our custom eFactories in five of their properties...over the next 9-12 months!

Anyway, the awesome inner circle of Club E (Corey, Heather, Tony, Merlin, Toby, Kevin and Meredith) all worked terribly hard, creating manuals, allocating spaces and figuring out the pricing and amenities for renting out the many spaces to our fellow Club E members and we threw our Open House tonight. It was a smashing success and we already have many checks in hand from our members ready to move in!

Seeing the hundred plus people tonight at our event was heartwarming and exciting. Only a fellow entrepreneur can appreciate that feeling when an idea which was only have scribbles on a napkin or ideas outlined on a white board...actually manifest into an honest-to-goodness business that took in real money... a mere two months or so from conception. Only in America, my friends.

Anyway, we are proving out the new eFactory model and our prototype combination Club E headquarters will start getting out the bugs and systematizing everything we need for an orderly rollout of our first 5 eFactories with our new partner Green Street Properties over the next year. Wish us luck...it should be a heck of a ride!

Learn more of what we are doing with the eFactory by visting www.clubefactory.com and let us know if you want to be one of our fellow pioneers.

Best regards,

Peter J. Burns, III
Founder

Peter Burns reaches out to fellow Veteran Entrepreneurs

I started my first company at age 19, as a freshman in college and have started over 100 companies since then. In the past couple of years, I've been involved with starting the Club E Network (www.clubenetwork.com) a social network and web resource for entrepreneurs, which also has a fast growing ground chapter presence in many communities across the U.S.

I invite you all to join our entrepreneurial community and want to know if you'd like to receive ongoing communications from us regarding our entrepreneurial initiatives. Just email me at pjb@clubenetwork.com.

In January 2007, I opened up this Nation's first College of Entrepreneurship, which offers a B.S. in Entrepreneurship and now offers a Masters as well as a non-academic Certificate of Entrepreneurship. Our programs are available online and on-ground and our second College of Entrepreneurship is about to be launched with many more to follow. Learn about our entrepreneurial education program at www.instituteforentrepreneurship.com.

Just a couple of weeks ago, we launched the first eFactory (www.clubefactory.com) and now have plans to roll out this state-of-the-art facility for 40-50 small business start-ups and expanding businesses in many communities across the country. We are going to be establishing many Club E chapters around the U.S., which we hope to support with an eFactory facility. We welcome your input and your help in making this all happen.

I am reaching out to you because this country is in serious economic distress and I truly believe that only a consolidated effort by its entrepreneurs can save our country. By uniting together under one banner, we have strength in numbers and by sharing resources and good old American ingenuity, we can re-ignite what made the United States of America the greatest Nation in the world...free enterprise.

I've recently had the honor to be featured in September's Vetrepreneur Magazine and as a fellow Veteran Entrepreneur you may enjoy reading it. I hope you will join me in this important mission.

Best regards,

Peter J. Burns, III
Founder
Club Entrepreneur www.clubenetwork.com
Institute for Entrepreneurship www.instituteforentrepreneurship.com
eFactory www.clubefactory.com
pjb@clubenetwork.com