The Entrepreneur Tools Online podcast series delivers not only online tools , but also other web resources available to the small business owner to help that individual become a Successful Entrepreneur.

For assistance with improving the financial health of your Entrepreneur firm, there are the BLUEPRINTS from the Rogue CFO, Chris Benjamin — or, as he describes it, the web site that is “The Road to Success for Entrepreneurs.”

This is a repurposed episode from Chris Benjamin in his Podomatic platform podcast series called “The Rogue CFO’s Expert Guide to Launch a Startup.”

In addition to 10 free whitepapers and other no-charge deliverables, Chris Benjamin also describes in this audio episode both the fee-based deliverables (e.g., online and web tools, audio and video files, and ebook training modules) in the area of financial health for Entrepreneurs. He also includes templates and other educational offerings.

Chris Benjamin is also the subject-matter expert who delivers both the free audio-book modules, as well as the audio and video and screencast training in the 7-week online Premium Podcast education offering at Finance for Startups (at www.finance4startups.com).

Copyright (c) 2012, Matrix Solutions Corporation. All rights reserved.

If you have launched your small business or Startup, then you will be looking for opportunities to promote and market your business. There are traditional methods using old media, and some using new media.

This is a repurposed podcast episode from the podcast series known as The Struggling Entrepreneur.

However, BUILDING A COMMUNITY can be a strategy where you can become a subject-matter expert or trusted advisor and perhaps a thought leader, and then word-of-mouth and viral marketing can be an effective method for referrals (and this can then act as a strategy for promotion).

In this episode of Entrepreneur Tools Online, we deliver to you some ideas on using an online tool that is available on the internet to help build your community and give you the credibility, awareness, exposure and expertise that you need in addition to traditional promotion tactics.

That tool is the Meetup(R) facility at www.meetup.com.

As you will hear in this repurposed podcast audio episode, this online tool and facility is sometimes considered a type of Social Media Network tool. This online facility provides a great deal of the tasks and “grunt-work” that is needed by an organizer who would like to host and provide in-person meeting sessions with members of the subscription group that share the passion, topic, idea or subject matter for the “meetup” group.

You can do the following as a result of holding your in-person and virtual meetups:

- promote an ebook that you have just written and published;

- promote your blog and podcasts (both audio and/or video) from your blog and web site.

- create offers, discounts and “show specials” for events and business shows in which you will be participating, attending or sponsoring–from the National / International or local level (i.e., from South By Southwest or BlogWorld/New Media Expo or Consumer Electronics Show, etc. to your own regional or local events);

- promote any training courses or educational offers that you may have for both free and/or fee;

- hold roundtables for feedback about your niche or industry segment of your business;

- deliver great value in content by having guest speakers with interesting topics, how-to sessions, announcements or community buzz;

- and many other results, as well.

However, what was not mentioned in the audio podcast episode is that the management and development team at www.meetup.com conducts periodic Meetups for Organizers in the regional areas, as they travel to different cities. In these meetups, they get feedback from organizers about tools and tasks that they would like to see in the online tool, as well as speak to the developers themselves, and they listen to different updates and announcements.

I myself attended several of these when the meetup.com team visited Austin, Texas. I was quite impressed with the level of sensitivity and response from the visiting team, and this gave me more faith in the tool from www.meetup.com.

Copyright (c) 2012, Matrix Solutions Corporation and www.meetup.com. All rights reserved.

This new era of online consumption of content can be a big help for the Entrepreneur and Small Business Owner that wants to improve the chances for business success. Thus, Entrepreneur Tools Online and Struggling Entrepreneur podcast series are delivering to you an interview with Jay Ehret, a small business marketing specialist.

Jay Ehret (who is known as @themarketingguy on twitter) is also himself an entrepreneur, and he is celebrating 10 years in running his own firm that helps entrepreneurs with their marketing–by means of consulting, training, instruction via webinars, blogging, education and live workshops. However, Jay is now venturing into what is affectionately called the “dial-a-webinar” model, in which he is providing an a-la-carte selection of his recorded webinars from his back catalog (but they are “evergreen”).

And Jay is now venturing into the model of delivering both education and training, as well as initial consultation, in a program that is called the ENTREPRENEUR’S EDGE.

Having known Jay, and having done co-presentations with him in events such as ProductCamp, I cannot wait to see the high quality of what he will deliver and the value it will bring to the entrepreneur.

As you will hear in this audio episode,  we discuss Jay’s vision for the online tools that entrepreneurs will be consuming to gain the skills they need and the knowledge that is necessary to plan for success–and avoid the “shotgun approach” (which he calls “tactic lust” in marketing).

By the way, Jay is also providing a 25 percent discount for any of his products in his online store at www.themarketingspot.com.

Jay has provided a discount code, which is good for any product in his store.

The discount code is the following:  Fred25.

Our thanks to Jay and our best wishes for success in this second decade of being an entrepreneur, and now adapting the business model to online tools, online education and knowledge, and online consultation.

Copyright (c) 2011, Matrix Solutions Corporation and The Marketing Spot. All Rights Reserved.

Although the Entrepreneur today has multiple private sector and public sector low-cost (or free) resources, and although the home-based Small Business Owner is accepted as  a valid business, it was not always so. In fact, the home-based Entrepreneur carried a stigma as a second-class citizen that had no credibility and just only a bad reputation — mainly because the individual was not part of mainstream Corporate America in the employ of a large multinational firm like IBM, DEC, AT&T, etc.

Here, in reflection of the passing of Steve Jobs, we delve into the area of Entrepreneurship in the 1975 time frame–and Steve had to overcome this particular stigma (from this repurposed episode of the podcast series The Struggling Entrepreneur).

In addition to the model of Steve Jobs in founding his startup called Apple Computer Corporation as an Entrepreneur, we also compare this to a case study of my own personal experiences of having been an entrepreneur during this same time — and living through the stigma of being a “no-op” (that is, an individual who could not be taken seriously, as home-based businesses were scoffed and mocked).

The discussion salutes three situations that Steve Jobs pioneered for us:

(1) Launching as an Entrepreneur in 1975 and overcoming the stigma of being a home-based small business owner;

(2) Overcoming the growth of a small business into a multinational firm within several years;

(3) Re-inventing his entrepreneurship after being thrown out of his own company (some call this “failure”) and pursuing his visions and passion until they became reality.

You, too, can buck the tide, overcome failure and pursue your passion and dreams amidst setbacks.

The final part of the discussion discusses exit strategy implementation, as well as updating your own personal plan to complement your entrepreneurial business plan so that you yourself can achieve what only YOU can define as “SUCCESS” and happiness in your world.

Copyright (c) 2011, Matrix Solutions Corporation. All rights reserved. Photo shared via web site at

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/05/steve-jobs-photos-apple-cofounder_n_997306.html#s391999&zoom=huge

This discussion is about some online resources that can help you get some revenue streams for your small business from podcasting– that is, including podcasts as part of your marketing plan and marketing tools within your business. This is especially true if they are complementary to your value proposition, your target audience “hot buttons” and your value which you deliver to your customers.

This repurposed episode was from a live presentation made originally for syndication to the podcast series The Struggling Entrepreneur. It was delivered in August of 2011. There are some slides which you may follow.

For the pdf document with the slides to this presentation, please select the link here.

These multiple revenue streams span the spectrum from the very small and incidental ones (usually within 60 days) to the more consistent, timely and lucrative streams that take longer to create, nurture and mature.

What is highlighted most in this audio podcast episode is that a podcast must be integrated as part of the marketing strategies in your business–and they must highlight the value proposition, as well as be integrated in all the marketing communications. They must also support the conversion of prospects to customers in whatever sales funnel model your business would support. They must be complementary with the social media plan, the media plan, the promotion plan, the marketing plan–which all should support the Business Plan for the firm.

A key resource that you can get online is the book More Podcast Money by Dave Jackson (the entrepreneur who hosts several podcasts and has a membership site called The School of Podcasting.

This 82-page ebook shows you all the ways to create multiple revenue streams after creating a podcast series in the form of a show.

Some of the other resources, web sites and links mentioned in this audio podcast are the following (and this is NOT all-inclusive):

- Finance for Startups at www.finance4startups.com and www.premiumcast.com/finance4startups

- Gain Control of Your Day at www.gaincontrolofyourday.com and www.premiumcast.com/gaincontrolofyourday

- Entrepreneur Tools Online at www.entrepreneurtoolsonline.com

- School of Podcasting at www.schoolofpodcasting.com

- Chris Brogan Blog at www.chrisbrogan.com

- No Agenda Podcast at www.noagenda.com

- Jungle Warriors (audio narration of book) at www.premiumcast.com/junglewarriors

-  CasaBlanca to VE-Day: A Paratrooper’s Memoirs (audio narration of book) at www.premiumcast.com/a-paratroopers-memoirs

- Meetup facility at www.meetup.com

- Entrepreneur Edge webinars and courses at www.themarketingspot.com

Copyright (c) 2011, Matrix Solutions Corporation. All rights reserved.

In this episode of Entrepreneur Tools Online, we deliver to you a brief book review by Chris Benjamin, the Rogue CFO, in the form of a repurposed episode from his podcast on Podomatic called Expert Guide to Launching a Startup.

This short episode reviews the book by Cynthia Kocialski titled STARTUP from the Ground Up.

Chris describes the insights that he feels are of value for the entrepreneur who has a startup — or is aspiring to create a startup. Topics range from evaluating if you are really an entrepreneur to planning to promotion to investors and funding your small business (including your revenue model)–all the way to exit strategies.

Since Entrepreneurs are looking for online tools and resources, we felt that this podcast by Chris Benjamin can be a good resource for those aspiring entrepreneurs; and perhaps it can be a good tool for helping to plan and launch your business.

The online version can be found on www.amazon.com with the Kindle Version of the ebook.

Copyright (c) 2011, Matrix Solutions Corporation and Chris Benjamin Consulting, LLC. All rights reserved.

In this episode of Entrepreneur Tools Online, we deliver a brief description of an online tool called Choosewhat.

This resource is referred to as Small Business Solutions and Tools and is located at

http://www.choosewhat.com

In our self-guided tour of this tool for the entrepreneur, we discovered that the main focus is on the Home Page panel of 22 steps for the “CW Startup Guide.” This becomes a series of tasks, starting from Naming your business all the way to getting Health Insurance.

In addition, the categories of the articles are rather interesting, as well as the Forum Posts.

What will be interesting is to see in detail the CW Labs and their evaluations of different other resources. Also, the content of the CW Newsletter could be a good resource for quick tips, hints and other current articles for the aspiring Entrepreneur.

We will be attempting to have an interview with the business owner for this site in an upcoming episode. In this way, we can see the directions and trends for this site, membership alternatives and special offers, discounts and promotions for the Entrepreneur.

Copyright (c) 2011, Matrix Solutions Corporation. All rights reserved.

In this episode of Entrepreneur Tools Online, we deliver a repurposed discussion. This is originally published on the podcast series of The Struggling Entrepreneur.

In this episode, we present a challenge to the Entrepreneur–especially the Solopreneur–that is always present in the world of an online presence on the internet, and how it can affect your brand, your business and your person (including unnecessary stress). This could be a hidden challenge for the newly-launched small business owner, and it can turn into a real business “disaster.” We also present a few strategies to address this ever-present– but latent– issue.

The hidden challenge centers around getting feedback from those individuals or firms that want to deliver scathing and negative opinion–which can then present a potential problem or damage to yourself (as an individual with integrity) or your brand or your company or product or service.

This topic was discussed on the podcast episode number 249 from David Jackson and his School of Podcasting at

http://www.schoolofpodcasting.com.

The show notes for this episode are at this link:

http://schoolofpodcasting.com/voicing-your-opinion/

Every Entrepreneur who has a presence on the Internet is exposed to this problem. This exposure is increased many-fold by having feedback mechanisms (like comments from readers)  available on a blog, or participation in social media tools and networks (like twitter and facebook), etc.

A couple of professional-based solutions are presented as some resources for listeners to investigate in order to address this challenge by avoiding the negative feedback, or mitigating it or overcoming it as a solution to a problem:

(1) The CUSTOMER(R) Program from Integrity Systems, especially the Problem-Solving Formula(TM); and

(2) The Feedback Model from both Manager Tools and Career Tools Podcasts.

Copyright (c) Matrix Solutions Corporation. All rights reserved.

In this episode of Entrepreneur Tools Online, we deliver a repurposed episode from the podcast series The Struggling Entrepreneur. This is an interview with James Weddle of www.groupcharger.com. He is also a founding member of www.worksody.com.

In this audio episode, you will hear an experienced entrepreneur that is bringing to market a tool that will assist different groups and communities. This tool has a web site where you can ask to be on the beta version–at http://www.groupcharger.com.

Also, James Weddle is creating a community of lean startup assistance programs for entrepreneurs and small business owners. Hear how he can help the startup community with this new idea. Take a look at the vision at http://www.worksody.com.

We will be very interested in following the development and deployment of this GroupCharger tool.

Copyright (c) Matrix Solutions Corporation. All rights reserved.

In this episode of Entrepreneur Tools Online, we deliver to you the actual live presentation at a meeting of small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs at a training seminar at Cospace, a co-working location.

The discussion centered around the top issues facing the Entrepreneur — especially the solo-preneur — and what you can do about them. The presentation was only 30 minutes long, and it is delivered to you as part of the audio podcast episode.

You can get the  slides that accompanied this recording:

Click here to get the slides in a pdf document  .

One key area that was of focus during the presentation was the list of questions that an Entrepreneur needs to ask about the four critical challenges and issues that can actually put the business at risk, if they are not addressed.

This presentation also stressed the importance of networking, good mentors, meetup groups and giving back to the community in the form of free consultation for the entrepreneur’s services.

The free whitepaper to which reference was made that dealt with Addressing the Issues facing the Struggling Entrepreneur can be obtained in episode 2 of this same podcast series of

Entrepreneur Tools Online .

Copyright (c) 2010, Matrix Solutions Corporation. All rights reserved.