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You are cordially invited to attend The Hardened Entrepreneur's Forum (HEF) on Friday, July 27th, 2007, an innovative new concept for entrepreneurs unable to find or receive relevant advice on business and personal success. (Feel free here to skip to the topics on the agenda below. But come back here to read the rest.)

Meeting between 1pm-3pm over a late lunch and coffee at the indulgent Cellini's on 65 East 54th St New York, NY 10022 New York (link to site), the HEF is a candid conversation about being an entrepreneur today modeled after our highly successfully Consultant Entrepreneur's Forum (link to CEF), and loosely based on the theory of the wisdom of crowds (link to book on Amazon): that assembling a diverse group of entrepreneurs will generate ideas superior to any idea any one of us could come up with individually.

The HEF isn't some industry or function-specific workshop or seminar, but a powerful incubation and advisory resource, designed to challenge your hard beliefs and those of the entrepreneur across the table from you, all in a format that enhances its value to you. To be sure, you will leave a Forum brimming with ideas on managing your business better . However, they will be your own, unique ideas, as opposed to your competitors'.

Unlike those other get-togethers for entrepreneurs the HEF charges no fees and does not require you possess a minimum "15 years of experience" to be a valued participant; it's a collaboration by professionals (ideally 5 to 8 per Forum), with no pretense that any "grand puba" has the monopoly on good ideas, and with no audience to impress but us. (Consequently, it's BYOF - buy your own food - and you must RSVP in order to reserve a big enough table.)

Because we value your perspective more than we care about your headcount, our only requirement is that you participate your perspective whenever you do show up (oh yea, we also do not require you show up promptly at 1pm; you can arrive and leave any time you have to during the session. Incredibly, over 97% of participants stay the full session.)

More than just an idea exchange, The Hardened Entrepreneur's Forum is also an unique networking opportunity that meets every other month after our first meeting at the same place and time (at least 50% of participants at each session will be different from the prior session); you'll receive reminders by email.

Topics to be discussed at our first meeting include:

1) Whether you've launched a business or not, everyone thinks they know what it means to be an entrepreneur: go-getter, brave soul, or unemployed transient. This general discussion of what entrepreneurship is and what it is not from the people who've actually done it will serve to inaugurate our first HEF and establish a common language for the rest of the event series;

2) All sorts of statistics claim that the more experienced and the more prepared, the more likely that an entrepreneur will be successful. To that end, teaching entrepreneurs has become a lucrative new profit center for many business schools, regardless of whether courses and curricula are designed around entrepreneurship as a job or whether the curricula are cobbled together from traditional management and business related courses. This discussion will tackle the value of such an education versus simply starting and learning on the job, with the added pressure of identifying the best place to make an investment given the limited capital would-be entrepreneurs have. (To make the topic more interesting, this discussion will be bi-partisan: you're in one camp or the other, regardless of how much more sense the middle makes);

3) Are you the boss of a big, medium, or small business? And who said you're big, medium or small? Getting big is not a business strategy and being categorized as small consistently fails to deliver the most relevant insights for management to reach goals. This discussion will explore a new, revolutionary innovation in business categorization called "Levels-Lens Analysis", developed by al berrios & co. It's not an exercise; it's a discussion about a business strategy tool every business should use to meet strategic goals and get out from under the "small, medium or large" labels conveniently tossed around for lack of understanding an entrepreneur's true needs. (This will be an informal discussion about a technical process. Participants should not expect to receive or conduct thorough analyses at the HEF);

4) The Divorcee Club: Why do entrepreneurs go through spouses like they go through coffee? Of course, this is a generalization, but with a national divorce rate of 50%, with the common reasons being changing finances, roles, interests, and goals, entrepreneurs are prime candidates to process spouses at each stage of their personal development. We'll discuss many examples, offer suggestions and counsel, and other ideas not only on managing long-term monogamy, but accepting and living with your changing relationship needs and wants. (Warning: Like all our conversations, this topic addresses taboos frankly; leave your delicate sensibilities in the office and if not, grin-and-learn from it. In the past, I have caused grown men to turn red-in-the-face with embarrassment or popped veins from neck-swelling anger.)

If you have a topic in mind, please respond to this email and it will get added on to the agenda (at the host's discretion.)

Time, as I'm sure you quip at every seeming waste-of-time asking for yours, is money; and the last thing a consultant that charges by the hour likes to do is waste time. Thus, it is with absolute confidence that we ask you to invest your time with us at our Hardened Entrepreneur's Forum. I guarantee that you will find it like no other resource you've ever experienced before.

Onward and upward! See you in 4 weeks,

Al Berrios
Managing Director
al berrios & co.

Al Berrios & Co. Events (www.alberrios.com/events/) is a service of al berrios & co.

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