Next Week
June 20, 2018
Aurora Public School Update
Rico Munn
APS School Superintendent
Rotary Board Meeting 10:55 at
Double Tree.
Red Tailed Hawk Park planning.
Members will break into groups
and select which committee to be on
Coming Events
June 25, Monday Golf Tournament
Shotgun Start 7:30 am at
Heritage Eagle Bend
June 30, Saturday, Installation at
Bob's barn 5 to 7 pm
July 4, Wednesday Dark No meeting.
July 11, Wednesday Club Assembly
Blue Badge
d
President-Elect Jim Bickford presented a
Blue Badge to Shannon Brunston.
Shannon is in marketing with Security First Insurance Agency.
Shots for Tots
Art Wolfe thanked the volunteers that assisted
in Shots for Tots from January through June . This wraps up another successful effort of
immunizing children, protecting them, and
enabling them to enroll in school. .
Other Rotary clubs will complete the year.
This Week
June 13, 2018
Entrepeneurship
Neil J. R. Pollard is the lead entrepeneurship faculty at
Community College of Aurora. Statistics show that
80% of businesses fail. There are 250,000 businesses
registered in Colorado. That is a large number of
failures.
In 2013 as an adjunct professor Neil surveyed a
number of colleges and universites
looking for an entrepeneur program that would
help fledgling entrepeneurs get started and over
come some of the obstacles to starting a business.
He discovered a program in Maryland, but it turned
out to be a course in writing business plans.
He was able to establish a program at CCA, They call
it the Launching Pad. It started small with nine
individuals. They were given a "skills and personality
assessment." He required them to test the market. They
each had to talk to 50 people they weren't related to.
They were talking to people in elevators and grocery
stores and any where they could find them.
The next step was to do a feasibility study. If this step
revealed cost problems or production or packaging
problems they were shown ways to attack the problems.
As part of the feasibility study, the students had to go
work in a company for eight weeks. They were interns
and probably unpaid. Each step required persistance
and dedication to their idea.
The "Launch Pad" furnished the students the requisites
such as office supplies and an area to implement their
ideas. Neil gave examples of five individuals and the
problems they had to over come to get to the
implementation stage.
He emphasized that they really needed to be in touch
with their customers at each stage.
They needed to "differentiate' their product or service
from that in the market. Making it "cheaper" is not
feasible since larger companies would start with
"economies of scale". That could only come later if they
were successful.
Neil didn't say how he graded. If they started a successful
business they probably got an "A". They should have been
given credit for completing the steps. All in all it was a
very thoughtful and interesting presentation.
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