What a journey life is!

Three weeks ago Club Entrepreneur was turned upside down in the midst of active business operations when we were evicted from the Club E Office headquarters in Tempe without notice. We had previously learned that our landlord was in foreclosure by its lender and a Trustee's sale of the property had been set for July. Our attorney had made all of the appropriate steps to mitigate this action by offering the landlord and lender a number of viable options, so that our tenancy could remain intact. Club E acted in good faith. The landlord and their law firm did not. As a result, a dozen Club E tenants, over 100 attendees streaming in for three important events and 11,700' of furnishings and equipment had to be removed during the busiest time of everyone's day with no notice and no consideration.

Before the night was over, one of Club E's greatest supporters, Dolf de Roos, had called in from Chicago where he was on a speaking engagement, offering a suite of beautifully situated offices for our core team to move into the following morning. We broadcast a short video to our membership from the new building the next morning (see video above) and hundreds of views resulted in numerous emails, calls and texts offering great support for Club E. We jumped back into business hosting our one-on-ones at the new site and planning for our monthly event, which went off flawlessly, courtesy of our event host, McCormick & Schmick's and our wonderful speaker, Pam Gaber of Gabriel's Angels. A dear friend from D.C., coming to Phoenix on other business, made a point of arriving in time to attend our event. Marsha Ralls, founder of The Ralls Collection, is one of the finest people and entrepreneurs that I know and we were both members of YEO, now known as EO. This was Marsha's first time to Phoenix and to attend a Club E meeting and she loved the experience, which made me proud.

Two weeks of one-on-one meetings with members resulted in scores of new opportunities for us all. Club E is launching Club E Ventures, which will participate in select opportunities presented by its members as both an operator and equity partner. Using the collective resources and opportunities afforded by our nearly 4000 strong membership, we believe that Club E Ventures can become a very important source of financing and new business launchings. We already have a number of great opportunities knocking and will report on each one as things manifest.

One such opportunity is Club E's possibility of becoming a franchisee for Front Office Staff, a state-of-the-art receptionist and answering servce business, specially created for small businesses. By retaining this affordable service a business's phones are answered by courteous professionals who are trained in your business's operations and who manage calls to a pod of up to 80 businesses (all in the localized area) where they cross-market each pod member's services to each other. We are very excited to have this opportunity at Club E, which wil be scaled into our expanded markets as we roll out new chapters across the country very soon.

Much more to report but this is a good step. Club E is alive and well and growing stronger each day...and there is one more big empty building in the area with no tenants and about to become part of another bank's "non-performing asset" portfolio.