Every year, the folks at Entrepreneur Magazine name an Entrepreneur of the Year. They’re looking for a person who makes a positive impact and improves their industry, employees, and community with a combination of ideas, leadership, and vision. The deadline for entries this year is June 15, so you’ve got plenty of time to enter and share your story.

Let’s take a look at some quick lessons you can learn from some past winners:

• Don’t give up: 2011 Entrepreneur of the Year Lee Rhodes was a mother of three fighting lung cancer when she was inspired to start glassybaby. If she could overcome those odds, imagine what you can do!
• Ignore the naysayers: People told Rhodes she wouldn’t be able to make a success of a business that sold just one product. She proved them wrong. So did 2008 winner Devon Rifkin, of the Great American Hanger Company, who’s company makes and sells… hangers.
• Empower your team: 2012 Entrepreneur of the Year Daniel Lubetzky, maker of KIND Healthy Snacks,  gives every employee stock options. Every employee gets a sense of ownership.
• Have a cause: Lubetsky is a social entrepreneur who’s companies operate on a “not-only-for-profit” business model, with an economic as well as social bottom line. Rhodes subscribes to this model as well, giving a large percentage of her revenue to programs for cancer patients.
• Find a problem: Rick Alden, of Skullcandy, was Entrepreneur of the Year in 2010. In his acceptance speech he stressed the importance of finding creative solutions to existing problems.

Next year we’d love to feature lessons fellow entrepreneurs could learn from your story. Just click here to enter for a chance to be named Entrepreneur Magazine’s Entrepreneur of 2012.

Winner image on homepage courtesy of Shutterstock

Designed for entrepreneurs who are either starting a new business or growing an existing one, Palo Alto Software’s Start, Run & Grow Your Business: An Introduction to Entrepreneurship course is currently being taught at colleges and universities around the country.

Maria Torres, Program Manager; Celina Solis, Gigi Paquette, Nina Taylor, Greg Magie, Barbra Nelson, Silas Denny, Carolyn Elliot, Jarred Partridge, Margarita Solis, Susan Coyle, and Instructor, Polly Mertens. (not pictured Reena Plant)

This course takes students through the process of conceiving, creating, managing, and growing their own business. The goal is to provide a solid background of important concepts for anybody starting or running a business.

Congratulations to Spring 2011 Graduates!

David Ryal recently wrote to us to tell us about the Women’s Business Center’s graduates from the program.

MCSC/WBC consultant and instructor Polly Mertens recently celebrated the conclusion of the latest Entrepreneurial Training Program offered to budding entrepreneurs and existing businesses. The Spring Class graduated from the course with a graduation ceremony held at the community room of a People’s Self Help Housing facility on South Higuera.

Eleven students (see photo) completed the class that is based on the curriculum and software program Business Plan Pro that has been developed by Small Business Guru Tim Berry of Palo Alto Software. The core curriculum has been taught at the University of Oregon.

The fourteen-week class takes the students on the trek of writing a business plan. Topics include: business basics and start-up; market analysis and strategy; developing financials; getting financed; the importance of the Web and Social Media; building a team; legal issues; tax issues; and making the pitch.

The certificate program comes with the seal from the Association of Small Business Development Centers. The corporate sponsor for the class was Citibank. The graduation ceremony was the last for Maria Torres, former Program Director of the WBC. She congratulated the students on behalf of the MCSC Board of Directors for a job well done.

Everyone at Palo Alto Software wishes the Spring 2011 Graduates an exciting and entrepreneurial future.

It’s always difficult to keep an upbeat view during hard times, and to remember that there are always opportunities for those who look close enough. Still, without those doggedly incurable optimists, we would still be plodding along without the benefits of some iconic inventions.

A list of Recession Inventions: Success Stories in Bad Times, was posted last Monday on mainstreet.com.

Chocolate Chip Cookies — 1930
Fortune magazine — 1930
Basketball — 1891
Miracle Whip — premiered nationally 1933
Monopoly board game — the early 1930s
Transparent adhesive tape — 1930
Coors Brewery — opened 1873
iPod — 2001
Ketchup — 1876
Compact fluorescent light bulbs — 1970s
Twinkies — 1930
Photocopiers — 1937
Diet Coke — 1982

The LA Times posted a similarly-themed list in their Some inventions born amid recession recently. So did ABC News Eureka! Recession Sparks Inventive Spirit while this BusinessWeek article, 20 Most Import Inventions of the Next 10 Years looks at Innovation from Recession.

So even in a bear market, grab the bull by the horns and pursue your dreams of innovation.

Steve Lange
Palo Alto Software

Ah yes, research. You want the truth? Study the research–or so we all seem to think. But then the first thing you do, with any research, is look at how the data were compiled. And take it all with a grain of salt.

I saw a good example yesterday, in this post by Steve King of Small Business Labs. He’s looking at a really interesting new report called “The Anatomy of an Entrepreneur,” which was just published by the Kauffman Foundation. Here’s his summary:

• Company founders tend to be middle-aged and well-educated and 95 percent of their survey respondents had completed college and 47 percent held advanced degrees.
• Building wealth (75 percent), capitalizing on a business idea (64 percent) and owning a business (64 percent) were the top reasons given for starting a business.
• Most had significant industry experience prior to starting their business. Also, 70 percent were married and 60 percent had at least one child when they started their business. The average respondents were middle-aged when they started their business.

Cool. I like this. Oh, and by the way, it turns out that most entrepreneurs are second children. And I’m a second child, and I had significant business experience, I was married and had four kids, I have a grad degree, and I fit the mold pretty well.

But no, wait. Steve discovers a major caveat:

It is important to note that 77 percent survey respondents are founders of high-tech companies. And although there isn’t much company data, it is likely most of the respondents started high-growth employer businesses with significant invested capital. Because of this, the survey results do not apply to the founders of typical small businesses.

Damn! Just when I was thinking I could win some arguments, and maybe even pinpoint who’s an entrepreneur and who isn’t. Instead, it turns out that, like just about every other survey, this one gives us just one particular view of one particular group of people who decided to answer the questionnaire.

Back to the drawing board. Interesting, but there you go again. Research is interesting, nice to know, but not solid enough to draw any conclusions from.

And probably better than just a wild guess. That is, if you have enough sense to take it all with healthy skepticism.