V.L. Thompson's Blog, page 21

10 Questions to Ask if You Want to Create a Winning Business Plan

Article from entrepreneur.com by Arlenem Weintraub

The stodgy business plan–that multipage printed document that entrepreneurs used to hand out at meetings with venture capitalists–has gone the way of the typewriter and Rolodex. These days, entrepreneurs are expected to lay out their strategies in slick Power Point presentations, complete with colorful pictures and informative charts.

But while it’s true that the format of the business plan has changed, the substance most certainly hasn’t. If you’re headed out to raise capital for your company, you’ll still need to address key issues about the size of your market, the experience of your team, and your long-term financial goals. In the wake of the financial crisis, persuading potential financiers that your plan has legs will be especially challenging.

 

Here are the key questions you should ask yourself before you fire up Power Point and start preparing your slides.

1. Have I proven that I’m filling an unmet need in the market?

As the economy still struggles to turn around, entrepreneurs are under pressure to gauge the strength of their market–in detail–before they go out and raise capital. Try test marketing your product on a small scale so you can realistically forecast how much you can sell in the future, suggests Edward Hess, professor and Batten Executive-in-Residence at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business.

“Entrepreneurial funding is moving away from formal business plans to having to prove that customers are actually going to buy what you’re trying to sell,” Hess says.

2. How will I acquire and retain customers?

You’ll also need to prove that your idea isn’t a fad.

“Understanding how customers are going to be found, acquired and retained is critical,” says Alison Berkley Wagonfeld, operating partner for Emergence Capital Markets in San Mateo, Calif. “Some companies might say, ‘We’re going to buy search words,’ but once they get somebody to their website, how are they going to sell them a product?”

3. Why am I better than the competition, both current and future?

If you have direct competitors, you’ll need to devote several slides to depicting exactly how you plan to differentiate yourself. If you have no competitors, you need to explain that, too, Wagonfeld says.

“It’s always great to think you have no competitors, but the flipside to that is why has no one else found this opportunity?” Wagonfeld says. “You may have a different expertise or a unique technology,” but you have to explain why you think you can retain that competitive advantage.

4. What’s the story behind my financial forecasts?

One common mistake entrepreneurs make in their business plans is to project that they will capture a certain percentage of the overall market for their product without fully explaining how they intend to do that, says Mark Steranka, director of planning and policy for Moss Adams’ Consulting Group in Seattle.

“You can’t just play a numbers game,” Steranka says. “What will the key decisions be along the way? What will the key strategies be? You need to do a stellar job of really explaining how you’re going to get from point A to point B.”

5. What elements of this plan can I depict visually?

The rise of Power Point as the format of choice is forcing entrepreneurs to make their pitches with fewer words and more pictures. Some parts of your business easily lend themselves to graphic presentations, such as financial forecasts that can be shown in bar charts. But you might also consider using graphics, photos, and illustrations to demonstrate how your product works or how it differs from the competition.

6. Should I recruit a few key advisors?

Bryan Pearce, venture capital advisory group leader for Ernst & Young in Boston, says every startup should assemble an advisory board–a small group of industry leaders who can complement your skill sets and help you formulate your plan.

“An advisory board doesn’t carry the legal weight of a formal board of directors, but it can be very helpful to the founding team in advising them on how to get the company going,” Pearce says. The makeup of your advisory board should be included in your business plan, too. “If good people are willing to lend their names and help to get you going that speaks volumes about the potential of the business idea.”

Read entire article on entrepreneur.com

Godonomics: Straight Road, With Potholes

Article from thinkingchristian.net by Tom Gilson 

Book Review

Godonomics: How to Save Our Country–and Protect Your Wallet–Through Biblical Principles of Finance by Chad Hovind.

Have you ever driven on smooth, straight highway, only to be jarred when your car dropped unexpectedly into a pothole? That’s whatGodonomics felt like to me. It’s an excellent survey of biblical thinking on basic ethical/economic principles. Chad Hovind’s explanations are clear, his illustrations engaging. He has excellent advice. The book comes highly recommended. I’ll add my voice among those recommendations.

But that’s only if you know how to steer around the potholes. A couple of them are axle-breakers. On page 63, Hovind writes,

In about 400 BC, Aristotle taught that money was sterile and nonproductive. He, like other Greek gnostics, believed the material world was inherently evil. He taught that pursuing money and productivity was creating a yoke that bound a person to a wicked world.

What he got right about Aristotle was that he was Greek (so far so good) and taught that money was “sterile,” something I didn’t know until I played Google scholar on it this morning. This sterility, however, was in respect to money earning interest. Being infertile (so to speak), money could not reproduce, or so Aristotle thought. He said nothing of the kind of thing Hovind ascribed to him here. Gnosticism arose centuries after Aristotle, who by the way was born in 384 BC.

Some may dismiss that as ancient history, but there was also this on page vii:

I wade in with both feet, discussing religion, politics, and money. However, it is necessary to do so. These subjects have been left without deep philosophical and biblical insight for too long. Not since the groundbreaking work of Francis Schaeffer has the biblical worldview been pushed boldly and strategically into the public forum.

I think the Colson Center, Acton Institute, Witherspoon Institute, and others might be disturbed to find out they haven’t applied “deep philosophical and biblical insight” into pushing the biblical worldview on these matters “boldly and strategically into the public forum.”

Neither of these errors has any material effect on Hovind’s message, but here’s the problem: every good book contains both familiar and unfamiliar material. Both are necessary: if everything is familiar the book is unnecessary, and if it’s all unfamiliar it’s unreadable. With egregious errors like these sprinkled in among the familiar material, I can only wonder how many there were in the unfamiliar. I don’t know what to trust and what not to trust.

7 lies that prevent Your Great Idea from becoming a Real Business

Article from blog.liferemix.net by Greg Go of WiseBread

A lot of people have a Great Idea. It might be a new invention or a local service business. Unfortunately for consumers, many would be entrepreneurs are waiting for “the right time” to start their Real Business. They have plenty of reasons (excuses) for the delays. From lack of time to lack of experience, our minds have creative ways of rationalizing our fears.

Here are 7 common excuses for not starting a Real Business, along with strategies for overcoming internal fear, uncertainty and doubt (“Internal FUD”).

How Internal FUD kills Great Ideas

1. I’m too busy right now. I’ll start when I have more time.

This is the most sinister of the excuses because it is completely true. You would do more for your business if you had all the time in the world. But really, are you ever going to get less busy?

Starting a new business involves risk, time and effort. As you pick up more dependents and/or expenses over time, your ability to take the risk necessary for launching a business disappears. Many would-be entrepreneurs wait far too long for a perfect moment that never comes.

Today is as perfect as it gets. Even if you only do one small thing a day (or week or month), it’s better than always waiting for tomorrow. Don’t put off your dream until you are “less busy”. It’s never going to happen.

2. After I get an MBA, I’ll be ready to start up.

Some people think they need an MBA before they can make their Great Idea happen. That is false. An MBA doesn’t guarantee success. And an MBA is not a requirement for starting a business.

At the end of the day, you’re trading a service or product for some money. If you can build/provide this product/service, and you can convince people to pay money for it, you have a business. MBA, bachelor’s or even high school degrees be damned.

3. I hate sales.

If you really hate trading a product/service for money (the definition of a “sale”), then I don’t know what to tell you. There’s no business without sales.

However, I’ll bet you don’t really hate sales. You hate used car salesmen and cold callers. The good news is that 99.9 percent of business transactions are completelyunlike the pushy sales pitch. Businesses that offer actual value don’t have to work very hard to make sales. If you’re making a product or providing a service that people want and it’s priced fairly, then both you and your customers are happier because of the sale.

Dismiss this myth — you don’t hate sales. Do you love talking about your great idea? Sales is just telling people about the awesomeness of your product/service.

4. I’ll do some research after South Park.

You know the really successful entrepreneurs enjoy their work much more than traditional leisure activities like watching TV/movies. And you probably already feel guilty about watching TV instead of doing more market research. I won’t lecture you about dedication and commitment and priorities. You already know that stuff.

Instead I’ll tell you how I got out of my entrepreneurial funk. Whenever I was watching more TV than working on my Great Idea, it was because I was stuck. I didn’t realize it at the time, but my mind was avoiding making a tough decision or working through a particularly hard problem. My Internal FUD pushed me towards easier tasks. Watching TV was a whole lot easier than spending a couple hours researching, thinking about, and making the tough call. I overcame this self-imposed obstacle by giving myself a “State of the Great Idea” report.

Rediscover your motivation by scheduling 1 hour of “hard thinking time” to come up with concrete actionable tasks. Make a date with yourself to honestly evaluate your Great Idea. Stealing 10 minutes in the shower or during your commute is not good enough. You need the full hour (or more) to think through the critical problems and identify actionable tasks you can do next. Once you have some tasks to do, and have made some forward progress in turning your Great Idea into a Real Business, you will lose the craving to incessantly watch and discuss Cartman’s latest hijinks.

5. I don’t know anything about business.

Good news! Business administration is the easy part. The hard part is having a good product. There are plenty of resources (both off- and on-line) that will help you cross those business process bridges when you get to them.

Shatter this roadblock by realizing you don’t need to be a business guru to get started. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are among the greatest entrepreneurs of our time, and they didn’t know anything about business when they started.

To help you figure it out along the way, here are a few online resources to help your business get started:

Entrepreneur.com’s Startup Basics section - articles on how to bootstrap your business
Guide to choosing the right business entity (LLC, C corp, sole proprietorship, etc)
IRS portal for small business and self-employed - forms and information about taxes
How to find a good lawyer
How to find a good accountant

Pore over articles at Entrepreneur.com and check out business books from the library. All the business know-how you need is freely available.

6. I don’t have startup capital.

Your business may legitimately need startup capital, but is your Internal FUD keeping you from looking for it? Not having the necessary capital right now is not a show stopper. There are lots of places to get startup capital.

A variation of this excuse is “I don’t want to take on partners/investors, so I need to save up the money myself.” This is Internal FUD using your greed against you. If you thought about it a bit, isn’t it better to own 50 percent of a Real Business now than 100 percent of a maybe future business that could or could not actually happen?

Don’t let Internal FUD keep you on the couch instead of raising that startup capital. Even if you wanted to retain full ownership, you have lots of financial options. Here’s a few creative ways to not take investors and overcome the money problem:

cash out your savings
get one or more low interest loans from friends and family
small business credit cards
live like a poor college student — lower your personal expenses
do it yourself
get a line of credit from your company’s bank
get a loan from the Feds (basic requirements for getting a SBA loan)

Here’s a chart with more funding options and the pros and cons of each.

 

Read entire article on blog.liferemix.net

Biblical Decision Making Steps

Article from christianity.about.com by Mary Fairchild

Biblical decision making begins with a willingness to submit your intentions to God’s perfect will and humbly follow his direction. The problem is that most of us don’t know how to figure out exactly what God’s will is in every decision we face—especially the big, life-altering decisions.

This step-by-step plan lays out a spiritual road map for biblical decision making. I learned this method about 20 years ago while in Bible school and have used it time and time again throughout the many transitions of my life.

Biblical Decision Making Steps

Begin with prayer. Frame your attitude into one of trust and obedience as you commit the decision to prayer. There’s no reason to be fearful in decision making when you are secure in the knowledge that God has your best interest in mind.Jeremiah 29:11

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” (NIV)

 
Define the decision. Ask yourself if the decision involves a moral or non-moral area. It is actually a little easier to discern the will of God in moral areas because most of the time you will find clear direction in God’s Word. If God has already revealed his will in Scripture, your only response is to obey. Non-moral areas still require the application of biblical principles, however, sometimes the direction is harder to distinguish.Psalm 119:105

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path. (NIV)

 
Be ready to accept and obey God’s answer. It’s unlikely that God will reveal his plan if he knows already that you won’t obey. It is absolutely essential that your will be completely submitted to God’s. When your will is humbly and fully submitted to the Master, you can have confidence that he will illuminate your path.Proverbs 3:5-6

Trust in the Lord with all your heart;

do not depend on your own understanding.

Seek his will in all you do,

and he will show you which path to take. (NLT)

 
Exercise faith. Remember too, that decision making is a process that takes time. You may have to resubmit your will over and over again to God throughout the process. Then by faith, which pleases God, trust him with a confident heart that he will reveal his will.Hebrews 11:6

And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.(NIV)

 
Seek concrete direction. Begin investigating, evaluating and gathering information. Find outwhat the Bible says about the situation? Gain practical and personal information that relates to the decision, and begin writing down what you learn. 
Obtain counsel. In difficult decisions it’s wise to get spiritual and practical counsel from the godly leaders in your life. A pastor, elder, parent, or simply a mature believer can often contribute important insight, answer questions, remove doubts and confirm inclinations. Make sure to choose individuals who will offer sound biblical advice and not just say what you want to hear.Proverbs 15:22

Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed. (NIV)

Read entire article on christianity.about.com

Answering the Call

Article by Valerie Thompson

We all have a calling on our lives.  But what if your call involved experiencing the death of someone close to you?  What if it meant that the people you call your friends will turn their backs on you?  What if answering the call meant that you had to give up something that you love?  Each of us was born with a call on our lives, a destiny that awaits us and that will never change, but what that call will truly require of us, we may never know until we are forced to experience it when the time is right.

Our call is one of submission to God.  Within the word submission, you will find “mission”, calling, duty, obligation.  When we are on our own personal mission, we set the stakes, lay out our plan and choose whether or not to follow through based on our own ideas of the consequences.  But when we are sub-missive, our mission is not our own.  We are sent on our path by God himself who has set the parameters of our mission and who has already laid out our plan.  The “consequence” is the manifestation of true “goodness” for our lives and glory unto God.  But if you’re like me, it’s not enough to simply know that God has our best interests in mind, or believe that He cares.  I must be in agreement that this plan of His is the right thing for me to follow.  I have to be ok with giving Him complete control, no matter what He faces me with, or I’m not totally submitted.

It’s easy to come to church. Getting dressed, getting in your car and making it to this building isn’t hard.  Singing in the choir, ushering, cooking the food to eat after service are all things that we can probably do with our eyes closed according to the talents that God has blessed us with.  After service is over and we return home, it’s easy to look over our schedules for the week and prepare to accomplish the tasks that we set out to complete.  What isn’t so easy, is to ask God what He would like to see us do with our week, and actually listen for the answer.  It’s harder to hear that He wants you to go in a different direction, but hasn’t quite pointed out the way.  It’s easy to plan, but it’s hard to submit.  It’s easy to worry, but it’s harder to trust.  It’s easier to make a plan B, than it is to wait until the last second to see if God is really going to come through.  Answering the call that God has on your life for total submission is easy, but following through, regardless of what comes to face you is not easy at all.

I’m in a time in my life that seems foggy.  I wake up in the morning unsure of how to be productive according to God’s plan.  I go to sleep guilty for not living up to what I think are His expectations of me.  I watch the hours pass, and wonder what more life will bring to me, and how long I have left to find out.  I look at the decisions I’ve made, and the things that God has unexpectedly done and am left feeling numb.  Knowing that God loves and cares for me helps sooth the outer layer of pain, but inside, the scars are still there.  It’s easy to look good on the outside, but harder to face the real worry and doubt that you are afraid to tell other believers you have deep down inside.  I’ve questioned God often, wondering how this event or that could possibly play a productive role in the plan that he has for my life.  I’ve been disappointed when I’ve prayed and longed for a response that is met with silence.  It is in these times that submission seems pointless, forced and fruitless.  But in writing these words, I am reminded of Romans 9:14 – 18 “What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” It does not, therefore, depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: “I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.”  I was reminded that in previous prayers I asked God to use me!  I told Him that I was open to his direction and guidance; that I would be willing to go, as Isaiah did, and wanted to do anything for the Lord’s service.  It is in those prayers that I gave God permission to take my life, take control and spin it in any direction that he pleases.  Ephesians 1:11-12 says “In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory.” I didn’t know that direction meant unemployment.  I didn’t know that it meant poverty.  I didn’t know that it would be lonely and scary.  I didn’t know that I would feel like a failure sometimes, that I would not accomplish certain things that I always hoped I would by this time in my life.  Most of all, I didn’t know that giving God that permission to do with me what He wants would mean that my life would be out of my control.  Proverbs 19:21 says “Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.”

When we answer the call, God might take us in a direction that we did not initially consider, yet fully in line with his purpose.  Exodus 9:16 says “But for this purpose I have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.” Isaiah had been given a vision of God calling out for a volunteer to go before His people on behalf of the Trinity and give a prophesy.  He didn’t know what God was going to say.  He had no idea how the people would receive it, and yet, he very enthusiastically said, “Send me!”  Submission to the call of God is really an agreement.  Agreement with God about where He will send you, what will be required of you when you get there and with who God will bring into your life during that journey.  God’s plan for preparing you for your call might involve pain, loss and suffering.  When submitting to God, we give Him permission to do whatever it takes to prepare us to take on the call.  Army boot camp isn’t fun.  It’s a grueling process that whips you into shape and prepares you to take on the enemy however he may attack.  When you answer God’s call, he will put you through spiritual boot camp.  Are things in your life falling apart?  Is the unexpected continually popping up?  Is your road being made more and more rough as you face taxing situations that seem unwarranted?  Boot camp.  God has decided that it is time to train you to fight in the war that is being waged in the heavens right now.  Not a war that determines who wins or who looses, but one that is trying to destroy your faith. Ephesians 10: 3-4 says “For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does.  The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.” Not everything that you face comes to comfort you.  Not every person you meet will be there to uplift you.  We must remember that what we pray for: peace, fruits of the spirit, freedom, etc. are only fully experienced once we completely let go, and let God have His way.  We must be flexible with how God answers our prayer and how he chooses to manifest that answer in our lives. Praying a prayer of submission will produce a loss of control in your life.  When you ask God to take over your life, you are volunteering to be out of control. Praying to be used for God’s purposes opens us up to be singled out, called upon, moved, changed, shaken, worked, and caught off guard.  But there is one very important thing in God’s calling that we can be sure of… hope.  Jeremiah 28:11 says “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” 

Isaiah’s mission was to inform God’s chosen people that they will no longer receive His spirit or protection.  In fact, his punishment didn’t introduce anything new that the people would have to face, He simply made their hardened hearts and rebellious ways a permanent state of mind. Remaining in the sin they created was their punishment.  That is a pretty heavy thing to have to tell someone.  We’re so used to saying an encouraging word to someone about their situation.  Rarely do we ever give someone a hug and whisper to them, “God is about to turn his back on you”.  But this was Isaiah’s call.  He had been enlightened to tell the Israelites that they would no longer be.  God’s sovereignty is something that we must consider in every situation we face after we’ve answered our call.  Your own struggles in life may just be the way that God reaches someone else facing a similar situation.  God might make life suck for you on purpose!  Look at Job.  In one day he went from being the wealthiest man on his side of the desert, to loosing everything.  In Job 10: 1-7, Job says “I loathe my very life; therefore I will give free rein to my complaint and speak out in the bitterness of my soul.  I will say to God: Do not condemn me, but tell me what charges you have against me.  Does it please you to oppress me, to spurn the work of your hands, while you smile on the schemes of the wicked?  Do you have eyes of flesh? Do you see as a mortal sees?  Are your days like those of a mortal or your years like those of a man, that you must search out my faults and probe after my sin– though you know that I am not guilty and that no one can rescue me from your hand?”  It wasn’t the devil who chose Job to go through the fire, it was God.   And it wasn’t because Job was who he was, it was because God was who He was.  God responds to Job in Chapter 40: 2-14 “”Will the one who contends with the Almighty correct him? Let him who accuses God answer him!”  Then Job answered the LORD:  “I am unworthy–how can I reply to you? I put my hand over my mouth.  I spoke once, but I have no answer– twice, but I will say no more.”  Then the LORD spoke to Job out of the storm:  “Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me.  “Would you discredit my justice? Would you condemn me to justify yourself ? Do you have an arm like God’s, and can your voice thunder like his? Then adorn yourself with glory and splendor, and clothe yourself in honor and majesty. Unleash the fury of your wrath, look at every proud man and bring him low, look at every proud man and humble him, crush the wicked where they stand. Bury them all in the dust together; shroud their faces in the grave. Then I myself will admit to you that your own right hand can save you.”  God says in Isaiah 55:8-11 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD.  “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”  Our calling has very little to do with us.  If we are submitted, we are now children of the most High God.  Saved from our sins and inheritors of eternal life.  But there are others who, without our witness to them about Christ, will die in their sin.  There are people that live around us every day, that attend our churches and work in cubicles next to us that are going to die and go to hell because they never knew God in the pardoning of their sins.  That is the call of the Missionary.  That is the call for us all.  That our lives may be used by God in whatever way he sees fit, so that those people can see who God is through us.

The call on your life, whatever direction it may lead you, is your call and your call only.  Whether you let it ring, or answer it, it’s still your call.  There is no one else created on this earth that is being prepared for your call other than you.  Know that the purpose God has for your life will go undone unless you choose to follow it.  You are in line with it, even today and He is using this message to reach you. Know that this call is not one that you can prepare for on your own.  Your talents, abilities, skills, personality, charisma, charm, good looks, etc. have nothing to do with you being able to endure what God has set out for you.  Only He can strengthen you. Only He can equip you. Only He knows where you’re going, what you will encounter when you get there, and how to come out on the other side victorious.

Your call, once you choose to answer it, will at times seem familiar, and other times foreign.  At times you will deny it, run from it, curse it and at others will rejoice in it.  It will be a blessing today, and feel like a burden tomorrow, but God getting the glory is the point. It is for Him that you answer, not for yourself.  When Isaiah asked God to send him, not even knowing what the message he was to deliver would be, he was doing so because of his love for God.  Accepting the call told God that he didn’t care what happened to him personally; just that God’s word is carried forth for the glory of the Lord.  No matter how you feel about your call, and again, you do have one, God gave it to you so that you can glorify Him.  Because it’s not about us, we sometimes tend to feel used. We feel disappointed when the outcome isn’t financially, physically or materially beneficial to us.  But it is our soul salvation that God is focused on.  It is the salvation of our neighbors, family members, church friends, co-workers, spouses, children and government leaders that God is concerned with.  Answering His call means living a life that is controlled by one whose love for the world caused Him to give up the only Son He had so that we could be saved by grace.  If he’s willing to do that to his blameless, sinless son, what do you think that He’s willing to do with your life?

Answering your call will strengthen and humble you.  It will cause you to shed tears, and cause God to shed whatever is not like Him from your heart.  But whatever it causes you to experience, whatever may devastate you or turn your world upside down, know that in the midst, God doing his miraculous work in you.  He’s got everything under His control, all he needs is your response of submission “Here I am God, Send me.”

Business As God Meant It To Be

Article From Christianity Today by Nathan Clarke

 

After four years working in youth ministry, Katie Nienow moved to the Congo to work in microfinance. Her boss was not happy. “You’re leaving the one thing God has best designed you to do,” he told the Richmond, Virginia, native.

But it seems he was wrong. Nienow remembers sitting in her first economics class at the University of Virginia: “I remember suddenly feeling like I had found the subject my brain was made to learn and to know.” In the Congo, Nienow worked for HOPE International, offering financial services to people who are often excluded from the formal banking sector.

Nienow is now doing something similar in Mountain View, California, in Silicon Valley. At Juntos Finanzas, a tech startup that she cofounded, Nienow says, “I’m able to engage in the restorative work that God cares about . . . building business as it ought to be, as a channel for the common good.”

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Venture capitalist offers tips on mixing faith and business

Written by Skip Vaccarello

 

I had an opportunity recently to sit down with venture capitalist Kevin Compton to discuss faith and business. He disclosed his near-death experience, recounted how he discovered his calling in life and offered his rules for success. Compton’s story provides another example of how God is working in the lives of people in Silicon Valley.What is our purpose in life? This becomes an even more compelling question when a person confronts a near-death experience.

A close call

“Why was I spared? What was I saved for?” These are questions Compton asks himself since surviving what should have been certain death from an accident when he was 7 years old.

Compton and his friends were playing army at a construction site near his home in rural Missouri. When he jumped off a rafter in the house under construction to surprise a friend below, a steel rod punctured his leg, traveled to his intestines and damaged them. His friends helped him the three blocks to his home. His mother, seeing the profusion of blood, rushed young Compton to the hospital.

The attending physician miscalculated the severity of his injury and simply patched up his leg. That evening, the boy’s body started turning black and he experienced severe pain. His parents rushed him back to the hospital. The internist on duty properly diagnosed the extent of the injury but gave Compton little chance of survival. The young doctor “broke every rule in the hospital,” according to Compton, and operated while his parents prayed.

Following the operation, the doctor indicated that if Compton did survive, he would never walk, certainly never run and never live a normal life.

A miracle happened and not only did Compton survive, but he was also able to walk. As a teenager, he ran the 100-yard dash as a Junior Olympian and even played football.

Mixing faith, business

Compton was raised in a Christian home – his grandparents were missionaries, his father had been a pastor and his mother was a devoted follower of Christ.

Christ became more personal to him in high school.

“I never doubted God or Jesus, but I questioned myself – my ability to be a good Christian,” he said. “Am I living up to my potential? Am I living up to my obligations? Am I being a good witness?”

While in college, Compton worked at a local Ford dealership. When the dealership acquired its first computer in the mid-1970s, Compton was asked to make it work. At that point, Compton said, “I found my calling.”

When personal computers entered the market, he started selling them business-to-business. Businessland Inc. acquired the company he worked for, and Compton moved to California in 1986 as an employee of Businessland, the largest PC and networking retailer in the Bay Area at that time.

In the late 1980s, as Businessland was being sold, two of its investors recruited him to join venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Over the next 20 years, it became one of the most successful venture firms in the country, investing in many successful high-tech companies. Compton himself was rated among the top 20 venture capitalists in the world.

In addition to his role with Kleiner Perkins, Compton made a personal investment in the San Jose Sharks, which he sold in 2013. He currently is co-founder of a venture firm, Radar Partners, that invests in early-stage technology companies. In addition, he and his wife are engaged in microfinancing projects in depressed areas in Third World countries.

Throughout his career, he has stayed connected with the community and his church. For more than 15 years, he has taught adult Sunday school classes that have had as many as 150 attendees. He also coached Pop Warner football and helped out at Valley Christian High School. He uses his platform as a venture capitalist to speak all over the world.

Rules for success

Compton offered the following rules for success.

• Live by the Golden Rule. Treat others as you want to be treated.

• Have a sense of urgency. Compton said he works hard to make very few lists and, if possible, tries to take care of things right away.

• Make an effort, knowing that results will vary. “It’s better to just try rather than only trying when you know you won’t fail or waiting until everything is right,” Compton said.

• Think big. You accomplish little unless you have big dreams and act on those dreams, according to Compton.

• Think small. The difference between success and mediocrity is attention to detail, Compton said. He begins every day by reflecting on the previous day and often writes handwritten notes to thank or encourage others.

 

Skip Vaccarello is a longtime Los Altos resident and founder of a new website, Finding God in Silicon Valley. For a longer version of this interview, visit www. findinggodinsiliconvalley.com. Interviews from this site will be used as part of an upcoming book.

 

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YouTube’s Founders Challenge Vine and Instagram With New Video App

After months of teasing, the wait is over: Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, who brought us the video-sharing site YouTube, are taking the wraps off their newest project, a video creation app called MixBit.

Versions for Apple mobile devices and the Web will be going live on Thursday, and an Android version is due in several weeks.

On the surface, MixBit resembles two other leading video apps, Twitter’s Vine and Facebook’s Instagram. As with those apps, users press and hold the screen of their smartphone to record video. Instagram users can capture up to 15 seconds of video, a bit longer than Vine’s six-second maximum. MixBit allows 16 seconds.

But as the name suggests, MixBit is all about mixing and editing video. Both the app and a related Web site, MixBit.com, are aimed at making it easy to clip and stitch together snippets of video. Simple tools built into the app allow users to edit each 16-second clip and combine up to 256 clips into an hourlong video. The final product can then be shared on Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus or the MixBit Web site.

Think of it as “shoot, mix, share.” You don’t even have to do the shooting — the MixBit site allows anyone to snip and remix any publicly shared video content.

In fact, Mr. Hurley said, encouraging users to remix other people’s videos to create new works is the principal goal of the service, which is the first big product to emerge from Avos Systems, the start-up he co-founded with Mr. Chen two years ago. (The company has received funding from the venture arm of Google, which bought YouTube, as well as from Innovation Works, Madrone Capital and New Enterprise Associates.)

“The whole purpose of MixBit is to reuse the content within the system,” Mr. Hurley said in an interview. “I really want to focus on great stories that people can tell.”

5 Quick and Easy Tips to Boost Your Small Business Cash Flow

Article from smallbiztrends.com by Megan Totka

Maintaining a healthy cash flow is a big challenge for many small businesses. It can be hard to balance everything so that you have enough cash on hand to pay your bills and your employees’ salaries—and if your credit is tight, coming up with the funds is even more challenging.

A solid cash flow will not only help you pay everything on time, but may also allow you to take advantage of higher-ticket, cost-efficient opportunities, fund expansions, and more. Below are some quick tips to improve the cash flow for your small business.

Boost Your Cash Flow
Earn More Cash With Your Cash

If you keep your cash balances in a personal or business checking account, upgrade to an interest-earning checking account. Most banks offer them, and if you keep a minimum balance, you won’t have to pay a monthly service charge.

The interest rates for checking accounts aren’t terribly high, but you can earn even more by placing the bulk of your funds into higher-paying options like certificates of deposit (CDs), savings accounts or money market accounts and then transferring money to the checking account a few days before you need it.

Put Your Credit to Work

You can save money on office supplies, fuel, client expenses and more—freeing up the cash you would’ve spent for other things—with a loyalty credit card. Look for one that offers rewards you can use on a day-to-day basis.

Some even offer cash rewards that can really add up toward the end of the year.

Hold Off on Paying Your Bills

Many small business owners are conscientious about paying their bills immediately to get them out of the way. However, most vendors and suppliers give you 30 or 60 days to pay bills—and it’s good to take advantage of that grace period. You’ll be able to hold onto your money longer and use it as needed (such as in the event of an emergency) before paying out for bills.

Read over your invoices and find out exactly when bills are due. You can schedule electronic transfers to pay them off on the due date or a few days ahead of time if you’re concerned about potential bank snags or late fees.

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Trials Are the Gateway to the Kingdom

Article from Morning Star Ministries by Rick Joyner 

Our God is so big and so wonderful we will be marveling at Him for all of eternity, so it is good to get started! Because the first commandment is to love Him above all things, the ultimate issue by which it will be determined if we are successful human beings or not will be by how much we love God. Therefore, this should be the greatest devotion of our lives.

Because God is the most lovable Being in all of creation, I am convinced that we cannot see Him or learn anything about Him without loving Him more. Therefore, I consider my ultimate purpose as a minister of the gospel to be describing Him, revealing Him, and preaching Him in a way that would compel people to seek Him. Because The Great Commission begins with expressing the scope of His authority, which is all-inclusive, we must begin with this.

As we have discussed, the scope of His kingdom includes the entire universe, the natural and spiritual realms, with the temporary exception of planet earth. Here His kingdom is coming, but it does not extend over the entire earth at this time. His authority is over all in heaven and the earth, but His kingdom has not yet come to the earth, which means that He only exercises limited authority on the earth at this time. That limit is set by us. Let me explain.

Presently we are told I John 5:19 that “the whole earth lies in the power of the evil one.” Then again, we are told in Psalm 24:1 that “The earth is the Lord’s, and all that it contains, the world, and those who dwell in it.” So the earth is presently in the power of the evil one, but it belongs to the Lord. The Lord has “all authority in heaven and earth” (see Matthew 28:18) and He could take the earth back from the power of the evil one at anytime, but He hasn’t yet. Why? He has not taken His authority over the earth yet for our sakes.

How is it for our sakes that the earth is left in the power of the evil one? That is an obvious and good question. For those who only perceive Christianity as something to bless them and make their lives easier and better, it may be hard for them to ever understand the answer to this. Even so, the truth is very clear in Scripture. The Lord had the authority immediately after His resurrection to bind Satan and throw him into the lake of fire. Right then He could have taken His authority over the earth and made life much, much easier for everyone. Why would He not do this? He did not want to make this life easier for us, not yet anyway. In fact, He actually wants it to be hard. He wants us to go through trials.

This could sound like heresy for those who have bought into the man-centered, self-centered, and “bless me” gospel, but the true gospel that is actually the door to the greatest blessings in all of creation in the heavens or the earth, and the one corroborated by the Scriptures, is better summed up by Paul’s statement in Acts 14:22: It is “through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.” 

 

Read entire article on morningstarminisitries.org