http://www.crainsdetroit.com/assets/PDF/CD23965729.PDF

According to Crain’s Detroit, Wal-Mart is planning to open 19 new stores throughout Metro Detroit. Sadly, no plans are in motion to put one within city limits. According to the article this move is going to mean a lot more competition for mid-west based Meijer, Kroger as well as smaller grocers in the area. The article states, this will not be the end of the local grocery stores, but it will definately take a small percent of their market share.

Back to the no Wal-Mart in Detroit issue, aka the important stuff. According to an adjacent article in Crain’s, Wal-Mart claims they are looking at the opportunity but they are in the early stages. Surprisingly, Wal-Mart is not completely heartless, they set up a Jobs and Opportunity
Zones Initiative. Sadly, they are somewhat heartless though, although they set up this program Detroit is no where to be seen in it, even though the city has expressed interest in the initiative. Cities like Chicago, and Cleveland are on this list, but no Detroit. According to the initiative the program is for cities with high unemployment and high crime…but no Detroit?

$100 million for me?!…Sort of

According to Crain’s Detroit, Detroit Renaissance Inc. has announced a $100 million entrepreneurship fund up and available by the first quarter of 2008. According to the article it will be a fund for venture capitalist to support their investments. The funds will be focused at South East Michigan, but will be available throughout the entire state.  This fund is partly in place because many venture capitalist firms have complained that sources of funds such as universities have ignored Michigan VC’s and put money into many out of state firms. According to the article currently less than .5% of all U.S. VC money is spent in Michigan based business.  All and all I think this is an interesting development. Upon first reading the headline I thought a VC firm was offering 100 million to local businesses. Interestingly enough it is a fund of funds, as the article calls it. I was weary of that as I first dove into the explanation, but upon further evaluation I think it makes since for Detroit Renaissance to know its role and not to try to be a VC firm if it’s not, but to direct the money to VC firms that do know what they’re doing.  

There is no Box

I liked Bill Emerson. As of yet I hadn’t had much of an opportunity to come in contact with Bill or even hear much of him (other than the fictional birthday party for his daughter I was dooped into), but meeting with him was interesting. Having met with most of the top leaders in Quicken Loans it was nice to finally meet with the CEO. Bill had a strong yet humble veiw of leadership. He saw leadership as a role in which to serve people. I’ve heard many leaders say this before, but with Bill it seemed as though he actually believed in this service form of leadership.

As he spoke on leadership he explained in order to lead others you have to lead yourself. I think this is vital in business. Too many times people don’t set goals for their business because they aren’t used to setting goals for themselves. Too many times people don’t manage their business well because they don’t manage their personal lives well. Bill mentioned that we had to have a core belief system in being a leader and being successful and I believe that as well is one of those things that translate from the personal to the business.

A great piece of advice Bill gave was to get new prospects to tell you their goals and then explain your goals to them and then it’s vital to have them explain how they fit in with your goals. This way they confirm that they are on board and conversely you can see where they want to be in your organization. Another piece of advice Bill gave was to “under promise and over deliver” (I’m not sure if I’ve heard that one yet, but it sounds good ; ).

Bill had great nuggets of knowledge, being a guy who admits to love sayings he left us with some great ones to live by. Zig win everyone else zags. That’s an idea I’m taking to heart in my ideas for internet based businesses. He also said start each day asking yourself where can I have the most impact, interestingly my mentor gave similar advice a few weeks back. It’ s interesting that so many strings again and again keep getting pulled from people who don’t have that great of a connection to one another. There is no secert sauce, it seems almost more like a the kool-aid but one I’m glad I’m getting a sip of.

Small Plates; Big Vision

It was strange. As Todd Stern spoke he reminded me a lot of myself growing up. He spoke of doing yard work in the neighborhood at a young age and knowing what an entrepreneur was and wanting to be one long before anyone his age had gone beyond wanting to be a doctor or a fireman. I had all but forgotten that in elementary school I had been the same way. It was only somewhere in middle school that counselors, teachers and peers all but convinced me that picking a ”career” was a must.  It wasn’t until high school that the entrepreneur passion came back for me. Oddly, in a similar way it went with Todd. He began working for small quick serve food establishments and was trusted with the responsibility to manage the establishment a much younger age than typical.

Todd continued to stay in the industry and work his way up. From dishwasher to general manager he had the opportunity to work the restaurant industry from top to bottom. He was good at his jobs and was being paid well, but had to pursue his dream and open small plates. Despite construction outside his establishment for years, he was able to create a profitable business with over a million in revenue. 

Two other things I saw Todd and I had were what we see as important aspects of business development: A strong vision and strong networking skills. Beyond this Todd had lots of great advice to give. Similar to Dan Gilbert and many of the other speakers we’ve had he believes in creating a great environment for employees. And to create opportunity within the company for people to move up is vital to employee retention.

He also had two very unique pieces of advice that I hadn’t heard before but were great. The first was to create a list of things that excite us about the city. He mentioned this in response to a question Andrew had on how to convince outside businesses to team up with us to do things in the city. The other piece of advice that I think was the best advice he gave was not to grow too quickly. Through all the speakers I had heard this is something I don’t recall hearing. In the world of seemingly overnight success and dot com explosions like Facebook and You Tube the idea of not growing until the company has key people in place that can support the business is something I think I have overlooked. All and all, Todd was great and so was his lunch.  

Myface.com

Facebook.com began as the online social network for college students. It was characterized by it’s clean appearance and spam-free enviroment. It was the oasis from Myspace that college students were looking for. Was…was….were.

Facebook is changing. In the later part of last year, uproar flamed across the network as the simple college social network opened it’s doors to everyone and began to become more complex. Now facebook.com has announce they have opened up the site for developers like you and me (ok maybe you, but definately not me) to build applications that interact with the network.

There are already applications that can connect facebook to your instant messenger and share your music with your friends, and facebook will even allow companies to make money off of their applications if they choose. Now the question is, is that 22 year old idol to internet entrepreneurship, Mark Zuckerberg, a genius or too big for his barely of age britches.Sure options are cool. Adding video to myspace pages almost on its own changed the landscape of the internet helping throw youtube into the spotlight. But is facebook stepping away from its core going to do more harm than good?

http://www.themoneytimes.com/articles/20070525/facebook_unveils_platform_for_outside_developers-id-104121.html

Will the real Kwame Kilpatrick please stand up?

Scandals, misappropriation of funds and incompetence. These are many of the types of things that come along with a story on Kwame Kilpatrick. He’s been rated as one of the worst mayor’s in the country and the us versus them war using Kilpatrick and Oakland County Commissioner, L. Brooks Patterson, as figureheads is all most suburbanites, like myself, really know about Detroit’s 30 something mayor.

If you were to ask most of us from the Detroit suburbs if we were knowledgeable enough to judge Kilpatrick as a mayor we’d most likely say of course. We hear about him almost on a weekly basis, and often times even more frequently. But if you were to ask most of us if we have ever heard him speak, in any capacity aside from a Steve Wilson, yellow journalism sound bite, we probably couldn’t say we had.

Friday we were ready for just that. I heard him speak at the State of the City address, and I thought it was pretty good, but anyone can make a speech sound good, right? Well Friday I was shocked. Expecting a swendling disingenuine spin doctor to show up, I was confronted with someone completely different. I was confronted with Kwame Kilpatrick. The real Kwame Kilpatrick. It was a straight forward, seemingly honest (for a politician at least), completely competent individual who spoke of a vision for the city that lined up with my own.

He answered our questions without, to steal a piece of Quicken jargon, ARP’ing us. He explained how many of the situations the city was dealing with were issues that were put into motion before he even came to office. He said he simply didn’t know, when question came that he didn’t know about and he gave us the contact information of his personal asstant just in case we ever needed to contact him.

Now, I’m not saying that I’m going to run up to Ink Slingers and get Kwame’s name tattooed on my forehead. I’m not even completely saying if I was in the city I’d 100% vote for the guy. When he explained why we were selling our portion of the tunnel to Canada the numbers didn’t work out in a realistic fashion as to how many Americans use the tunnel each day. I think it worked out to something like 1 car every 6 minutes. But what I am saying, is smelling the breathe directly from the horses mouth came out a lot more fresh than the stories I’ve been told. The meeting with Kwame last Friday reminded me how important it is not to trust anyone who’s telling me it’s black or it’s white when I know it’s always a hue of grey.

One Bad Mofo

Obviously slightly cocky he, Bob Lanier began the session with an uncomfortable pill for most of us to swallow. An entrepreneur needs to have an ego. After being overwhelmed by the Isms and books like Good to Great that stated great leaders are rarely cocky but innately humble, Bob’s maxim smacked us in the face harder than a Spalding basketball dunked by Wilt Chamberlin.

 

In our first meeting with Dan Gilbert, he mentioned that Donald Trump’s seemingly big ego was actually a small ego. In Good to Great, a level 5 leader rarely saw success as their own doing. As I tried to digest this statement by Bob Lanier I had to draw some connections in order for it to make sense. Dominic Pangborn was the first thing that stuck for me. Dominic boldly told his boss after barely hearing about the health benefits offered at his new job that he better be nice to him because he was going to be his boss one day. Then he made it happen.

 

As I thought more, an entrepreneur really did need an ego. A great leader can be humble, sure. A great leader probably needs to be humble, but I think that’s part of growth. Entrepreneurs need to have bravado in their ego that tells them they can do what’s never been done before or what others don’t believe they can, that’s the only way it happens. An Entrepreneur needs to think that it’s them that make good things happen in the beginning, because in most cases it will have to be them that make things happen.

 

As I rethink the past few months I can only help but wonder, have we been led astray. I believe everything we learned is important in developing an organization that is built to last. But everything has it’s time. A billionaire CEO wouldn’t throw a party after closing a million dollar party to celebrate and bask in his glory, but I bet at his first million dollar deal he did gloat a little. An Olympic track star wouldn’t get on the track and start crawling around, but at one point that track star had to crawl before he could run. Are we being taught that crawling is what week entrepreneurs do before we’ve learned to make solid steps?

Franchise Anyone?

The article entitled, Build Your Own Franchise, in Black Enterprise, discusses how two former business partners who owned a Blimpie sub shop started their own franchise. Chris Spears and Gary Williams decided to open a healthy take out seafood restaurant. They did this to counteract the deep fried and high fat seafood options that were available. The great thing about their story is before they even sold one meal, they had already sold a franchise.

 

This article highlights the trend in healthy fast food and take out that is taking place. Also it highlights the trend in franchising ideas. I recently read in article in a local Detroit paper that discussed, while traditional businesses weren’t doing well currently, franchise ownership is actually up doing this economic time in Michigan. The article went on to explain that many former autoworkers took corporate buy outs and then used that money to start franchises. Possibly, what these partners did could be a viable concept to be done in the Detroit area.

 

The article goes on to discuss certain things to look for if you want to create a business you can franchise. The article discussed the high cost in attorney and consultant cost that have to be attended to in order to create a “franchisable” business. Companies such as ifranchise.net and others were given as good experts in the field to consult with. The article also discusses how the franchisor has to pay government fees in every state he plans to build a franchise.

The Trigger of Oppression

When I think of the greatest inventions in history the wheel always comes to mind. More currently the internet or the computer pops in my head, and of course inventions such as the telephone and light bulb seem like some of the greatest inventions in history. But rarely do I ever think of the gun.  More than anything this is what I got from the Charles H. Wright museum. As a black male growing up in a diverse community, throughout my life I’ve always questioned the state of the African-American race in this country and even more recently as I studied African history atOakland
University I began to ponder the position of the entire African race throughout the world.

 I’ve come up with a myriad of reason as to why things are the way they are, but nothing ever seemed to suffice. But at the Charles H. Wright museum, one stuck; the gun. The gun is the reason that one of the most highly advanced civilizations in history feel prey to a minority in their own country. 

Our tour guide told us how the first human came from
Africa. Our guide told us how hordes of knowledge, great architecture, and masses of wealth came from
Africa. He told us that many of the civilizations that we see as the “the greats” such as the Romans were taught by Africans. According to the tour guide, the oldest active university is in
Africa and some of the great thinkers in history studied under those scholars.  All and all, I really enjoyed the trip and found in very informational, but if anything I wish we could have spent more time there to learn more about the recent history.  

I Feel Lucky; Hit my button

The google.com presentation was great, and I’m not just saying that because I got a free hat either. I learned a lot about a service that I commonly use. The first thing that stuck out to me like a sore thumb on a European hand model was how the instructor pointed out what the “I feel lucky” button on Google was for. I realized for years I have used Google, but never once had I used that button, never once had I even thought to click it, I was so used to just hitting enter after I typed in my search criteria that I wasn’t even aware it was there. Now how is that for a perfect example of raising your level of awareness?

I also learned a great deal about basic task Google could perform. I always saw Google as simply a search engine. I never knew it could do task such as math. Also I didn’t know things such as currency exchanges and measurements conversions could be done right in the search bar of Google. I have for years used Google to search for sites to do those things, never knowing I was creating extra steps for myself.